Remember that big splash McDonald’s made in 2015 about how it was going to pay at least $1 above the local minimum wage? That was immediately found to have a giant asterisk attached in that it only applied to corporate-owned stores and not franchisee-owned ones, but a couple years down the road, Josh Eidelson reports, it’s turned out to have another huge loophole:
Chicago employee Kayla Kuper, who’s worked at a corporate-owned store since 2015, said she was hired at $11 an hour, one dollar above the $10 hourly rate that the city began requiring that year under a 2014 ordinance. Since then, Chicago’s minimum wage has advanced to $11 an hour while Kuper’s rate has ticked up only to $11.40.
“The wage increase in 2015 –- to be a $1 above the local minimum wage -– was applicable to the local wages on July 1, 2015, but was not a policy thereafter,” McDonald’s spokeswoman Terri Hickey said in an emailed statement.
When giant corporations tell you how great they’re going to voluntarily treat their workers, you always, always have to look for the “but.” And then you have to take it as a reminder of why workers are organizing—so that they’ll have the power to make their employers treat them well.
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