Staffing

McDonald's workers will walk out in 15 cities May 19

Photo: iStock.

May 11, 2021

The fight for a $15 minimum wage battle will heat up May 19, when McDonald's cashiers and cooks in 15 U.S. cities strike in advance of the QSR brand's annual shareholder meeting, according to Vice. The aim of the job action is specifically to call out the corporation to pay workers at least $15 an hour.

Nationally, a labor shortage across the restaurant industry is increasing pressure on brands to do more and possibly pay more for their in-store personnel. For instance, some brands — including several McDonald's franchisees — are paying signing bonuses, incentive pay for interviewing for posted jobs and other prompts to get new employees in their doors.

Restaurant workers are a sizeable contingent of the so-called Fight For $15 movement that seeks to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour — more than double the current rate of $7.25. On May 19, McDonald's employees will walk of their jobs in Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Chicago, Detroit, Flint, Kansas City, St Louis, Houston, Milwaukee and other cities.

During an earnings call last month, McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski and President Joseph Erlinger intimated higher pay may be in the offing at least for corporate-owned stores, according to the Vice report.

"I think one of the things that we are thinking about ... is in our company-owned restaurants, how do we think about what the pay and benefits package need to look like for us to make sure that we're able to get the people that we need," Kempczinski said.

"We're working through what some changes in our company-owned restaurants might look like from a wages and compensation perspective," Erlinger added.

During the strike next week, workers will also push McDonald's to withdraw its membership from the National Restaurant Association (NRA) and the International Franchise Association (IRA), which workers said have spent more than $3.2 million lobbying Congress against the federal minimum wage increase since 2019. The workers attribute this number to federal lobbying reports.

In response to a question about the strike from QSRweb this morning, McDonald's released this statement:

"Our first responsibility is to hard-working restaurant crew, and we respect and appreciate their dedication to serve millions of customers daily. It's the responsibility of federal and local government to set minimum wage, and we're open to dialogue so that any changes meet the needs of thousands of hard-working restaurant employees and the 2,000 McDonald's independent owner/operators who run small businesses."