Bernie Sanders to McDonald's workers: Vote for me and $15 minimum wage guaranteed
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Union members walked picket lines Wednesday at University of California campuses and hospitals in a one-day strike. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is again running for president, addressed strikers at the University of California, Los Angeles. (March 20)
AP, AP
Sen. Bernie Sanders told McDonald’s workers Thursday that if he’s elected to the White House they can be assured that working people around the country will make a $15 per hour minimum wage.
The comments by Sanders to McDonald’s employees came as he and several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates offered their backing to the fast food chain’s workers who are holding protests around the U.S. to demand a $15 federal minimum wage and more aggressive action by the company’s executives to confront sexual harassment and assaults on workers at the world’s biggest fast food chain.
“If elected president, trust me, every worker in this country will make at least $15 an hour and people will have the right to join unions,” Sanders told the workers in a video conference forum.
In addition to Sanders, Democratic hopefuls Julian Castro, Bill de Blasio, Jay Inslee and Cory Booker are scheduled to take part in protests in 13 cities organized by the union-backed Fight for $15 movement. The protests coincide with the Chicago-headquartered McDonald’s annual shareholders meeting.
Nearly the entire Democratic field has endorsed raising the federal minimum wage – which currently sits at $7.25 per hour – to $15. California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York, as well as the District of Columbia, all have passed laws requiring a $15 minimum wage be in place by 2025 or earlier.
McDonald’s announced in March that the company will no longer lobby against minimum wage hikes at the state and federal level.
The candidates are showing their support for the low-wage laborers as each candidate tries to burnish his credentials as a champion for American workers left behind in a booming economy.
The protests are organized by the group Fight for $15. The group was launched in 2012 by the Service Employees International Union to help nonunion McDonald’s workers call for a hike in wages.
“We need to stand with workers now more than ever to demand fair pay, better working conditions, and the right to unionize,†said Julián Castro, who is taking part in a McDonald’s protest in Durham Thursday.Â
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, another 2020 Democratic hopeful, ripped McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook, who made $15.9 million in 2018Â and $21.8Â million in 2017, for short-changing the company’s workers.
“Those people who say there isn’t enough money in these corporations to pay adequate wages out to look at this particular corporation where the CEO last year made 2,100 times the median wage of working people for the company,” said Inslee, who joined a demonstration in front of McDonald’s headquarter in Chicago. “That’s unjust and unsustainable. You can’t tell me it’s right that you can’t give people a raise when the CEO makes as much in one hour as the median worker makes in one year. That’s got to change.”
Earlier this week, the Fight for $15, the American Civil Liberties Union and Times Up Legal Defense Fund announced it was filing 25 new U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints and lawsuits over alleged sexual harassment and retaliation at McDonald’s restaurants.
Easterbrook in letters earlier this week to Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, and “Top Chef” host and executive producer Padma Lakshmi wrote that the company started working last year with RAINN, a leading anti-sexual violence organization, to improve its policies to more clearly define sexual harassment to its employees.
The company has also started working with a third-party firm on how to spot and prevent sexual harassment, and 90 percent of its corporate and franchise operators and general managers have taken it.
“Together, we have enhanced our policy so that it more clearly informs employees of their rights, more clearly defines sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation, and provides examples of what unacceptable behavior looks like,” Easterbrook added.
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McDonald’s will also soon roll out an anonymous complaint line for workers and front-line staff will start receiving training about harassment, unconscious bias and safety, according to Easterbrook.
McDonald’s workers also say that the company has done too little to ensure safety of workers from violent behavior by customers. Employees have called police around the country more than 700 times over the last three years to report assaults or threats of violence, according to a new National Employment Law Project report published this week.
Workers at one McDonald’s restaurant in Chicago filed an OSHA complaint this week in which they alleged that they haven’t been properly trained or provided with property security to deal with constant threats of violence at that restaurant. Employees at that restaurant have had to make more than 30 calls to 911 since November, including three different incidents involving threats by a person with a gun and two additional incidents where a person has been shot, according to the complaint filed by workers Maria Torres and Martin Ortega.
“We have asked the company to put policies and procedures in place to protect us from workplace violence,†Torres and Ortega said. “Despite the frequent incidence of workplace violence, our employer has done nothing to implement safety measures to protect us. Our employer must have a workplace violence prevention plan. It is not enough to call the police after a violent incident.â€
As President Trump is able boast of the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 50 years, many in the Democratic field are pushing back that working people have been left behind as the stock market has flourished and big corporations rack up huge profits.
Sanders in his talk with McDonald’s workers accused the fast food chain of paying its workers’ “starvation wages.”
“Nothing is ever given to working people,” Sanders said. “The only time working people make gains is when they organize and when they stand up and they fight against the corporate greed that we see today that is destroying the lives of so many of our people.”