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The following article appeared in Left
Business Observer #91, August 1999. It retains its copyright and
may not be reprinted or redistributed in any form - print, electronic,
facsimile, anything - without the permission of LBO.
Last November, LBO reported
that a group of mostly-teenage McDonald's workers in Squamish,
British Columbia, had voted to join the Canadian Auto Workers, despite barely legal
union-busting tactics as recognizably McDonald's as the Golden
Arches. Throughout contract negotiations this year, McDonald's
lawyers have challenged the CAW on every legal technicality they
could invent -- including the legality of a strike vote and a
bizarre interpretation of Canadian child labor laws. Says CAW
organizer Roger Crowther, "They won nothing but that's not
the object of the game. The point is to wear down the union."
And wear it down they did. Having stalled negotiations for
months, McDonald's began a decertification campaign in June. On
July 2 -- by which point less than half of the original shop members
were still working there -- a majority of employees voted to disband
the union. It was the closest any Canadian McDonald's workers
have come to a collective agreement -- there have been a few attempts
in both Canada and the U.S., but they've all been squashed much
earlier in the process -- and, given the initial promise, it's
a dispiriting outcome.
In Squamish, McDonald's faced a rare set of adversaries: a
union local with a demonstrated gift for organizing the fast-food
sector, and the British Columbian labor code, which is union-friendly
even by Canadian standards. McDonald's relentless determination
and limitless resources were able to frustrate the organizers
even in that environment. But the ordeal in Squamish is only one
of many recent attempts to drag the burger giant to the bargaining
table -- some of which have taken place in startlingly unexpected
places.
Indonesia
In some of those places, resistance to unions takes harsher
forms than PR and litigation. According to Gerard Greenfield, an organizer with the Indonesian
branch of the Geneva-based International Union of Food, Agricultural,
Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations
(IUF), acts
of military violence and intimidation against Indonesian workers
occur almost every week. Even pamphlets on union organizing can
provoke military intervention. But against this horrific backdrop,
there has been some organizing activity among McDonald's workers.
In July 1998, 160 workers at Indonesia's largest McDonald's outlet,
in a shopping mall in Surabaya, East Java, held a two-day strike.
They were protesting their working conditions (among the worst
in the nation, according to Greenfield), their wages (below the
legal minimum, which is the U.S. equivalent of 57cents an hour),
and the planned layoff of sixty workers. In addition to written
employment contracts, a wage increase, and an end to arbitrary
dismissals, the Surabaya workers demanded the right to unionize.
On paper, Indonesian workers actually do have the right to
esablish unions; soon after coming to power, the Habibie government
ratified ILO Convention 98, which guarantees the right to collective
bargaining. But given the military's homicidal hostility to labor,
that doesn't mean much -- and, besides, since the U.S. has never
ratified that convention, American companies have little incentive
to comply with it. Also, the ILO in Jakarta is weak and corrupt.
As Greenfield points out, it fails to recognize many plant-level
unions that are not connected to a federation -- or to the horrible
government-sponsored union SPSI; ILO officials probably would
have seen the Surabaya union as illegitimate because it wasn't
registered with the Labour Department.
On the second day of the Surabaya strike, workers declared
a union and elected leaders. But management refused to negotiate,
harassing employees and threatening to fire them for joining the
union. When support for the union deteriorated, all of its elected
leaders were fired. More than 50 workers quit the restaurant in
protest, but those who stayed on were forced to sign letters agreeing
not to hold any more demonstrations or to attempt to form a union.
In August, the IUF, which has helped to coordinate McDonald's
unionization efforts in numerous countries, plans to launch a
national campaign informing workers about the illegality of such
agreements, which are common among U.S.-based fast-food companies
in Indonesia like A&W, Wendy's, Dunkin Donuts and KFC. Despite
the toothlessness of the ILO Conventions, Greenfield believes
they can be used to raise workers' awareness about their rights.
To avoid military interference, IUF organizers plan to avoid demonstrations
or pamphleting. They'll meet with workers in small study groups,
working closely with labor organizations all over the country,
as well as the fired union leaders in Surabaya, who now run a
small street food stall. "McDonald's continues to expand
even while other fast-food restaurants are shutting down,"
says Greeenfield, "and it's a growing workforce of young
workers in Indonesia, like in most countries, so we have to get
them organized."
As Lenin said...
Efforts in Russia have been even more serious. Communist worship
of the Golden Arches has long been a stimulus to
Western joy, so when workers in a McDonald's' factory just outside
Moscow joined the Russian Commerce and Catering Workers' Union
last November, it wasn't just a marker of economic desperation,
but also quite the semiotic fuck-you. Since the ruble's disastrous
plunge the previous August, McDonald's had been laying off workers
and letting their 
real wages devalue
by more than half (before the crisis, the average wage was roughly
$200 a month). Post-devaluation, most of the plant's employees
would have to work for two hours to earn enough to buy a Big Mac,
which in Moscow costs about $1.46, compared with an hour before
the ruble's collapse. As Natalia Gracheva, a systems controller
who had been working for McDonald's for nine years, told Toronto's
Globe and Mail, it was a "revolutionary situation.
As Lenin said, the smell of revolution was in
the air."
About half of the plant's 400 workers signed union cards; under
Russian labor law, a company has to recognize a union even if
only three people sign up. McDonald's harassed the pro-union employees
mercilessly: cutting off their work phones so they couldn't talk
to each other, depriving them of bonuses routinely granted to
other workers, and punishing them for the smallest infractions
(one worker was disciplined for returning from a bathroom break
one minute late). Gracheva, the union leader, was denied part
of her salary. While Russia's climate does make it difficult to
fire workers simply for union membership, the company has been
quick to find other reasons to fire union leaders; one union member,
fired for being a drunk, a charge he denies, is suing the company
for illegal dismissal. In January, the Moscow city government ordered McDonald's
to recognize the union.
"After that, they formally recognized the union, but not
in practice," Kirill Buketov, coordinator of the Moscow branch
of the IUF, who has been helping the McDonald's workers, told
LBO. "They're still
hassling the workers." McDonald's has barred union members
from talking to each other during the workday, and cut union members'
work week in half (down to twenty hours). In February, the union
members submitted a contract to McDonald's, but the company never
responded. In May, the city intervened again, ordering McDonald's
to negotiate a collective agreement with the union, but so far
the company hasn't budged. Barely a dozen of the original pro-union
employees remain at the plant. Says Buketov, "This is against
all the laws. As long as union members aren't trying to throw
a bomb, no one has the right to obstruct its actions." But
labor laws in Russia, as in Indonesia, aren't enforced. Russia's
unions are even weaker than its government, and public opinion
is practically irrelevant in a country where most people can't
afford fries.
Euroburgers
McDonald's unions fare better in regions with fewer poor people.
In regions populated by desperately impoverished potential workers
(like Russia, Indonesia, and parts of the United States) replacing
agitators is no problem, as Katherine S. Newman observes in No
Shame in My Game, her study of burger flippers in Harlem.
It doesn't take very long to train people, so continuously replacing
agitators is always cheaper than negotiating with a union.
In Europe, things aren't quite as dismal. In
Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland, all McDonald's employees
work under a collective agreement, as do considerable numbers
in Germany, France, Finland, Ireland, The Netherlands, and Austria.
In Belgium, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy a handful (1%
or less) of McDonald's workers are unionized, estimates the IUF's
Patrick Dalban-Moreynas. With few exceptions, union victories
over McDonald's have been won by well-coordinated strikes and
boycotts, militant protests, lengthy legal battles or extensive
worker education campaigns.
Some of the strongest current campaigns are national in scope.
Last fall in Germany, where about 4% of McDonald's employees belong
to a union, members of the Food and Allied Workers' Union (NGG)
staged protests in over fifty cities, for a week. The actions
were part of a campaign to publicize McDonald's' systematic harassment
of its union shop, or "works council" members, as well
as the company's more creative union-busting tactics. (Pro-union
workers in Germany are frequently bribed to quit their jobs, sometimes
to the tune of 100,000 DM, or $65,000.) The union has been staging
these annual actions since 1996, and each year the protests swell
its ranks slightly; this year's is being held as this issue of
LBO goes to press.
 |
| The cover of a recruiting
pamphlet from the Finnish Hotel and Restaurant Workers' Union.
To contact them, write PL 327, 00530 Helsinki, or call +358-9-77-561,
or fax +358-9-7756-223 - or email them by clicking here. |
In Finland, the whole restaurant sector (including non-unionized
workers) works under a collective agreement, but a decade ago,
the union (Hotel
and Restaurant Workers' Union) had to organize a national
boycott of McDonald's to get the chain to comply. Since then,
the union has continued to recruit McDonald's workers, and now
about 6% of Finnish McDonald's employees are union members. [One
of their recruiting pamphlets is reproduced nearby.] The union
recently negotiated a startling concession from McDonald's; two
shop stewards (one representing Helsinki, another the rest of
the country) would be allowed to work on union business on McDonald's
time.
Many unions avoid McDonald's, or are quickly discouraged by
it, because, as Dalban-Moreynas of the IUF says, "They get
little return on their investment. [Organizing McDonald's] is
very time and money-intensive, and many just decide it's not worth
it."
Beyond legalism
There's no doubt that McDonald's is an implacably antiunion company, and responds to eruptions
of union fever in consistent ways. But since unionizing efforts
clearly fare better in some countries than others, it's reasonable
to ask what makes the difference.
Dalban-Moreynas says there is no single explanation. Better
labor laws and enforcement mechanisms do help: most of the countries
where McDonald's organizing has succeeded have friendlier labor
laws than the United States -- less time for elections, stricter
rein on employers' union-busting tactics, etc. But labor codes
don't explain everything: even where the laws favor labor, as
in British Columbia, McDonald's has enough money to litigate unions
to death. And McDonald's has no qualms about breaking laws, as
the Indonesian and Russian experiences amply demonstrate.
Also, some of the most devastating union-busting strategies
are hard to prove; firing pro-union workers is a good example.
Even in the U.S., the law frowns upon this practice, but it happens
so often that in a 1994 Commerce Department study, three-fourths
of nonunion workers said that if you seek union representation,
you're likely to lose your job. They're not wrong; according to
analyses of NLRB data by Cornell researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner, a third of companies
have illegally fired union supporters during elections. An employer
can easily find reasons to fire people who are poor, lacking education,
and young, as the McDonald's workforce tends to be; things that
used to be tolerated, like lateness, can suddenly become grounds
for dismissal in a union drive. And many young workers don't even
realize that firing people for union activity is illegal.
A further measure of the limits of legalistic explanations
is the experience of Nordic countries, all of which have essentially
the same labor laws, according to Dalban-Moreynas. But Swedish
unions have always had a harmonious relationship with McDonald's,
while Norwegian and Danish unions have had to strike and boycott
to get the company to honor legally-mandated union rights. Of
the three countries, Dalban-Moreynas says, Sweden has the stronger
national labor movement; it may be that movements equipped for
serious and coordinated campaigns are even more important than
laws. Of course, comparing Norway and Denmark to the United States
makes the case for a strong overall labor movement even more dramatically;
it's difficult to imagine U.S. unions organizing strikes and boycotts
that could pinch hard enough to make a fast-food leviathan say
uncle.
Meanwhile, back in Squamish, the CAW's Roger Crowther says,
McDonald's has convinced most employees that they don't need a
union anymore. Conditions have improved cosmetically; the company
has replaced an unpopular manager with someone the workers like
better, and employees are getting more hours. "They throw
them the odd party here and there," Crowther says darkly.
"So happiness has returned to the Golden Arches at Squamish."
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