The TUC have demanded the fast food giant recognise trade unions. McDonald's workers won't stop campaigning until they're successful.
Last year I was proud to stand with members of our union who stood up to McDonald’s. And this week the whole of the trade union was with them as the TUC General Secretary, Frances O’Grady, hand delivered a letter to McDonald’s demanding they recognise our union.
Some people were shocked these workers had the audacity to take on the world’s second largest employer – but it’s hardly surprising that workers are angry when Steve Easterbrook the CEO makes £6,000 an hour, while workers are struggling to get by on minimum wage.
Our members in McDonald’s know what the union movement is: it’s workers coming together to solve problems you can’t solve on your own. It’s knowing that if you knock on the door of the franchise owner or the CEO and ask for your pay rise alone, you will get the door slammed in your face. But if you band together and march to the boss’ door, he has to listen.
It’s the hard work of every McDonald’s worker that means the CEO can fly round in his private jet. It’s the hard graft of the workers in the franchises that mean the franchise owner can live in his suburban mansion. Why should our members live in poverty when it is our members who make these profits?
The trade union movement is built upon the idea that we are better able to solve our problems when we work on them together – which is why BFAWU (Bakers Food & Allied Workers Union) members had no hesitation deciding to join the global fight against McDonald’s.
This is a global campaign, too: four years ago a small group of McDonald’s workers in New York got together and took action to tackle poverty pay.
Now several years later, fast food workers in over 50 countries have taken action, and millions of workers have won higher wages.
Many have argued McDonald’s is too big and too hostile to force to the negotiating table. But I say our side is bigger: McDonald’s has millions of workers. Globally they have family and friends. We can force the giant to respect workers and our communities.
This week the TUC – which represents over six million workers across the UK – delivered a letter to McDonald’s calling on them to recognise our union. The message is clear: it’s time for change at McDonald’s.
Frances O’Grady, the General Secretary of the TUC, has been clear there is no worker in the UK that the labour movement will not support. She’s determined to ensure every job is a great job, and is leading the union movement to innovate and reach out to young people.
Whether you work one hour a week, are on a precarious contract, or your employer claims you’re self-employed, the trade union movement has your back.
She’s is ensuring the union movements understands that it is not about ‘generously offering help’ to women, black and migrant workers – but that it is women, black and migrant workers who are the future of the labour movement.
McDonald’s workers are leading the way – and their bravery is a lesson to us all. Because they are winning.
They have won a 10-year record pay rise.
They have won more guaranteed hours.
They have challenged and defeated bullying and harassment by both managers and customers.
They have won changes to make life more bearable at work.
My message to every worker is this: if you want to improve your workplace and your life, form a union. Participate. Stand together and win.
McDonald’s should know that when you are a union member you are never alone – that it is not the corporations that are all powerful but ourselves. It’s time to use that power.
Ronnie Draper is General Secretary of the Bakers, Food and Allies Workers Union.
Photo credit: TUC / Jess Hurd
See also: McDonald’s workers are going back on strike – and this time it will spread
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4 Responses to “Why the McDonald’s strikers are going to win”
Alasdair Macdonald
As someone who was a member of one of your predecessor unions during the 1960s, I wish you and the strikers well. We need to demonstrate to a populace which has been substantially de-unionised for more than 30 years – facilitated by inactions of the Labour Government and by sections of the party, including a fair number of sitting MPs – that ‘Unity is Strength’ and that collective action can win.
Jimmy glesga
Alasdair, perhaps you will concede that not all workers want to join a union and unions forced workers to join via the closed shop now defunct. I joined the EEPTU late sixties as an apprentice because I was forced too while on a building site. The Unions via this enforced system became a beaurocracy and thought this system would continue into perpetuity. Then Thatcher arrived and it all collapsed. Stuffing the cardboard ballot crisp boxes managed by the branch committees came to an
end. And we are where we are now due to Thatcher!
Alasdair Macdonald
Jimmy Glesga,
I will start with your interestingly ambiguous final sentence.
Are you implying that until the 1980s trade unions were a blight on democracy until Mrs Thatcher substantially disempowered them, and, by implication, a ‘good thing’’? Or, are you implying that the wages and conditions of working people as a whole have been progressively destroyed leading to the kind of situation in which the McDonald’s (no relation!) workers find themselves?
As a lifelong trade union member, who had a number of stints as a workplace representative, I saw a number of practices which I thought were reprehensible and which I opposed. Trade Unions like any large organisation from the Roman Catholic Church to Apple Corporation is susceptible to goal displacement and corruption by cliques. The Westminster expenses scandal was a paradigm example. There is a need for transparency and much more active participation in all organisations. Your own union – the electricians’ – during the 50s and 60s went through some convulsions due to power struggles between various cliques until Mr Frank Chapple emerged on top: a fact which some saw as a mixed blessing. Mrs Thatcher was able to embark on her attack because there were some egregious cases.
However, she was being opportunistic and was using this as a way of disempowering working people with respect to employers. She was transforming the State, from its role as mediator between competing claims, such as Labour vs Capital, to becoming an agent of Capital and, particularly, the financial interests of the City of London.
I can remember well the arguments for and against ‘the closed shop’. I suspect that few working people under the age of 50 would have any idea what the term means, because the significance of trade unions has been reduced for so long. We really need strong trade unions operating within a framework of rights and responsibilities such as is the case in Germany. There always have to be checks and balances smongst different groups so that we do not reach the kind of oligopoly that exists in Russia and towards which things have been progressing in the UK.
Finally, having worked like you on building sites in the 1960s the advances working people have made in health and safety have been enormous. Deaths and serious injuries were pretty common. Nowadays, a single fatality on a site in a single year usually makes news. Good H&S is something that trade unions have won for not just their members but for the wider public.
patrick newman
Weakened Trade Unions – get real who does anyone thinks that benefits?