Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser [44]
Tom and Mike Cappelli closed the St. Hubert McDonald’s on February 12, just weeks before the union was certified. Workers were given notice on a Thursday; the McDonald’s shut down for good the following day, Friday the thirteenth. Local union officials were outraged. Clement Godbout, head of the Quebec Federation of Labour, accused the McDonald’s Corporation of shutting down the restaurant in order to send an unmistakable warning to its other workers in Canada. Godbout called McDonald’s “one of the most anti-union companies on the planet.” The McDonald’s Corporation denied that it had anything to do with the decision. Tom and Mike Cappelli claimed that the St. Hubert restaurant was a money-loser, though it had operated continuously at the same location for seventeen years.
McDonald’s has roughly a thousand restaurants in Canada. The odds against a McDonald’s restaurant in Canada going out of business — based on the chain’s failure rate since the early 1990s — is about 300 to 1. “Did somebody say McUnion?” a Canadian editorial later asked. “Not if they want to keep their McJob.”
This was not the first time that a McDonald’s restaurant suddenly closed in the middle of a union drive. During the early 1970s, workers were successfully organizing a McDonald’s in Lansing, Michigan. All the crew members were fired, the restaurant was shut down, a new McDonald’s was built down the block — and the workers who’d signed union cards were not rehired. Such tactics have proven remarkably successful. As of this writing, none of the workers at the roughly fifteen thousand McDonald’s in North America is represented by a union.
protecting youth
ALMOST EVERY FAST FOOD restaurant in Colorado Springs has a banner or sign that says “Now Hiring.” The fast food chains have become victims of their own success, as one business after another tries to poach their teenage workers. Teenagers now sit behind the front desk at hotels, make calls for telemarketers, sell running shoes at the mall. The low unemployment rate in Colorado Springs has made the task of finding inexpensive workers even more difficult. Meanwhile, the competition among fast food restaurants has increased. Chains that have competed in the city for years keep opening new outlets, while others are entering the market for the first time. Carl’s Jr. has come to Colorado Springs, opening stand-alone restaurants and “co-branded” outlets inside Texaco gas stations. When a fast food restaurant goes out of business, a new one often opens at the same location, like an army that’s seized the outpost of a conquered foe. Instead of a new flag being raised, a big new plastic sign goes up.
Local fast food franchisees have little ability to reduce their fixed costs: their lease payments, franchise fees, and purchases from company-approved suppliers. Franchisees do, however, have some control over wage rates and try to keep them as low as possible. The labor structure of the fast food industry demands a steady supply of young and unskilled workers. But the immediate needs of the chains and the long-term needs of teenagers are fundamentally at odds.
At Cheyenne Mountain High School, set in the foothills, with a grand view of the city, few of the students work at fast food restaurants. Most of them are white and upper-middle class. During the summers, the boys often work as golf caddies or swimming pool lifeguards. The girls often work as babysitters at the Broadmoor. When Cheyenne Mountain kids work during the school year, they tend to find jobs at the mall, the girls employed at clothing stores like the Gap or