SInce opening in 1955, McDonald's has grown to serve more burgers and affect more lives than perhaps any American company ever formed.
In 2010, McDonald's bought back stock and paid dividends totaling 6 billion dollars. This unprecedented growth accompanied a 7.3 percent growth in service and retail jobs while the country weathered the worst recession in its history.
Recently, the company made a gaffe by publishing a financial plan insinuating that employees get a second job to pay for expenses. This sheet didn't include heat, most medical expenses and spending money.
The company has essentially written off its employees by publishing this financial planning guide and told them to get to work. All this labor just to pay for the executive and stockholder compensation renown in the corporate world.
Apparently, only 20 percent of people working minimum-wage jobs actually come from poor households, but not for lack of trying on the part of McDonald's.
The recession brought out the worst in most companies, who look at their employees like numbers on a table instead of living, breathing people who look to McDonald's for their livelihood.
This repeated and continuous wearing away of any security given by a job is really what we should look toward as a culture and country.
I completely understand the need for a corporation to pay the largest dividends and attract the best corporate officers, but we should be looking at what they do to their employees as a real testament to how their business is doing.
The culture that we have in the U.S. is one of incessant competition and near-constant fear of dying without money. As college students, we should look at our progress toward a degree as something of a miracle.
With the power and promise of a college degree, we probably won't end up as a pauper and instead as an entry into the middle class. The trials of corporate America must be looked upon with disdain. What kind of an institution would look at their employees and say that they are expendable or without merit?
It's a sick time for people without a kind of upward mobility that has been a hallmark of the U.S. since its inception. By relegating people to an underclass only trying to survive, the entire country and economy suffers. However, the McDonald's corporate leadership doesn't really care about the economy or a culture dedicated to people. They only need, say, 10,000 educated people to staff their upper management and franchise locations. The rest can be ignorant and uneducated for all the company cares.
Overall, McDonald's has no reason to help out their employees and, like many corporate American success stories, will continue to work their employees hardest for the least money.
Tell Peter about your favorite dollar menu item at peter.northfelt@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @peternorthfelt
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