McDonald's workers went on strike for the first time in the UK on Monday 4th September, US Labour Day. Workers were protesting over their wages and asking a rise to £10 an hour, an end to zero-hours contracts and union rights. Workers also mentioned among the other reasons for the strike being bullied and harrassed by their managers.
Around 200 people protested outside the Houses of Parliament in London, among them workers from restaurants in Cambridge and Crayford, south-east London. The strike was a globalised industrial action, supported by other groups as well including the Fight for $15 movement in the US, a campaign for a $15 (£11.60) hourly wage.
McDonald's stated that the strikers represented 0.01% of its UK workforce, but joining the action was terrifically brave for the workers who did it, considering that some of them may end up being mistreated for doing so, jeopardising in this way their earnings and their jobs.
According to the company, its hourly pay rates are above the national living wage – going from £5.42 for under-18s to £8.31 for over-25s. Yet the truth is far from that considering that under-18s often get £4.75 an hour.
The action brought back the attention on exploited workers and on people who can not afford a decent living, but end up being trapped in a precarious state.
McDonald's may be the second-largest restaurant company in the world with a revenue of $22bn a year, but it isn't the only company whose workers are living in poverty. There are "McJobs" in all sorts of industries and all over the world: you should see the rates for translating and proofreading films and series (and the short time allowed to translators to do so…) broadcast on Netflix that many of us watch from our comfy sofas.
In the fashion industry exploitation is rife in different areas, from people working in sweatshops to those working at retail level in high street shops or in warehouses or large e-commerce companies. So it is not just McDonald's that should be blamed, but the rotten global system in which it operates that does not guarantee a living wage and basic rights to workers, seeing them as disposable entities kept alive to make profits for wealthy people (yes, it may be a perfect plot for a Ken Loach film…).
The unstable existence of all these workers trapped in McJobs deeply clashes with what we often see on fashion runways: Jeremy Scott glorified McDonald's in Moschino's A/W 2014 collection and, while at the time quite a few fashion critics thought it was fun and cheeky, it was actually deeply sick, superficial and annoying.
Looking at that collection with its Chanel jackets in McDonald's signature packaging colours, a top with the slogan "Over 20 million served", a restaurant uniform and a chain-handle leather bag shaped like a Happy Meal box and comparing the pics with photographs of McDonald's workers, makes you want to burn many fashion magazines and piles of "designer" clothes (by the way, do these clothes deserve the "designer clothes" label?). Going through pics of bloggers and influencers with their French fries covers for expensive mobile phones makes you realise how our society vapidly celebrates a type of consumption that is pushing many people towards depression, self-hate (you don't need a specialist to be told that McJobs destroy the energy, happiness and cheerfulness of workers) and chronic insecurity.
New York Fashion Weeks has just kicked off and you can bet you will hear a few critics, buyers, stylists, bloggers and influencers complaining about not having the time to eat in between tight runway schedules. Maybe they should stop thinking about not having the time, and refocus the attention on those who serve their sandwiches, lattes and runway snacks or those who have worked on some of the clothes that they are seeing, and who may not actually have the money to buy their lunch.
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