Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser [42]
Today few employees in the fast food industry qualify for overtime — and even fewer are paid it. Roughly 90 percent of the nation’s fast food workers are paid an hourly wage, provided no benefits, and scheduled to work only as needed. Crew members are employed “at will.” If the restaurant’s busy, they’re kept longer than usual. If business is slow, they’re sent home early. Managers try to make sure that each worker is employed less than forty hours a week, thereby avoiding any overtime payments. A typical McDonald’s or Burger King restaurant has about fifty crew members. They work an average of thirty hours a week. By hiring a large number of crew members for each restaurant, sending them home as soon as possible, and employing them for fewer than forty hours a week whenever possible, the chains keep their labor costs to a bare minimum.
A handful of fast food workers are paid regular salaries. A fast food restaurant that employs fifty crew members has four or five managers and assistant managers. They earn about $23,000 a year and usually receive medical benefits, as well as some form of bonus or profit sharing. They have an opportunity to rise up the corporate ladder. But they also work long hours without overtime — fifty, sixty, seventy hours a week. The turnover rate among assistant managers is extremely high. The job offers little opportunity for independent decision-making. Computer programs, training manuals, and the machines in the kitchen determine how just about everything must be done.
Fast food managers do have the power to hire, fire, and schedule workers. Much of their time is spent motivating their crew members. In the absence of good wages and secure employment, the chains try to inculcate “team spirit” in their young crews. Workers who fail to work hard, who arrive late, or who are reluctant to stay extra hours are made to feel that they’re making life harder for everyone else, letting their friends and coworkers down. For years the McDonald’s Corporation has provided its managers with training in “transactional analysis,” a set of psychological techniques popularized in the book I’m OK — You’re OK (1969). One of these techniques is called “stroking” — a form of positive reinforcement, deliberate praise, and recognition that many teenagers don’t get at home. Stroking can make a worker feel that his or her contribution is sincerely valued. And it’s much less expensive than raising wages or paying overtime.
The fast food chains often reward managers who keep their labor costs low, a practice that often leads to abuses. In 1997 a jury in Washington State found that Taco Bell had systematically coerced its crew members into working off the clock in order to avoid paying them overtime. The bonuses of Taco Bell restaurant managers were tied to their success at cutting labor costs. The managers had devised a number of creative ways to do so. Workers were forced to wait until things got busy at a restaurant before officially starting their shifts. They were forced to work without pay after their shifts ended. They were forced to clean restaurants on their own time. And they were sometimes compensated with food, not wages. Many of the workers involved were minors and recent immigrants. Before the penalty phase of the Washington lawsuit, the two sides reached a settlement; Taco Bell agreed to pay millions of dollars in back wages, but admitted no wrongdoing. As many as 16,000 current and former employees were owed money by the company. One employee, a high school dropout named Regina Jones, regularly worked seventy to eighty hours a week but was paid for only forty. Lawsuits involving similar charges against Taco Bell are now pending in Oregon and California.
detecting lies
AFTER WORKING AT Burger King restaurants for about a year, the sociologist Ester Reiter concluded that the trait most valued in fast food workers is “obedience.” In other mass production industries ruled by the assembly line, labor unions have gained workers higher wages, formal grievance procedures, and a voice