Most people do their food shopping solely at supermarkets or grocery stores where they find only those options that big food corporations allow them. Today the top five food retail companies account for about half of the market.
Fast-food corporations opposed a California minimum wage increase under the guise of concern for workers, claiming it would result in lost jobs. The bill passed, and the numbers are in: that concern was just scaremongering.
Although providing food and employment to tens of thousands might seem the right thing to do, Chief Executive Chris Kempczinski said in a letter to employees, "it is impossible to ignore the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine."
McDonald’s has long portrayed itself as a champion of black uplift through black ownership of its franchises. But McDonald’s version of black capitalism, like the idea of black capitalism as a whole, has only ever benefited the few, not the many.
From Mesopotamian irrigation to McDonalds, the bestselling food writer tells Oliver Milman that his new history of food is his most important work
A recent National Labor Relations Board ruling means unions could one day organize nationally among all McDonald’s workers, rather than one store at a time. Nowhere perhaps did the ruling reverberate louder than in Atlanta, headquarters for Arby’s, Chick-fil-A, Popeye’s and other fast-food franchises, as well as many hotel, retail and temp agency chains.The ruling could be a huge boost for the Service Employees International Union, which is organizing fast-food workers.
“The taxpayer costs we discovered were staggering,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education and coauthor of a report about the cost of the low-wage fast-food industry to U.S. taxpayers. “People who work in fast-food jobs are paid so little that having to rely on public assistance is the rule, rather than the exception, even for those working 40 hours or more a week.” Fast food is a $200 billion-a-year industry.
The Bay Area strike is one of a series of nationwide one-day strikes -- timed for Labor Day and the 50th anniversary of the historic civil rights-era March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The strikes are the culmination of months of fast-food walkouts that began on the East Coast, organized by New York-based grassroots movement Fast Food Forward, and have rippled across the country.
The ongoing organizing effort of fast-food workers has highlighted the highly exploitative conditions faced by those at the deep fryers and cash registers of America’s most profitable fast food outlets, which include Burger King, McDonald’s, Dominos, Pizza Hut and KFC. The actions and considerable media attention has also begun to chip away at the conventional image of a fast-food worker as someone who bears her servitude with a youthful grin.
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