Peter Boyle
On March 8, 1996, Michael Johnston, 19, a Wollongong University student, was killed while cleaning a stove at a McDonald's restaurant. He was just two weeks into the job.
Johnston had been instructed to carry out the daily cleaning of a kitchen grill by wiping it down with hot water. Following his "on-the-job training", he first had to move the grill away from the wall. The power cable remained attached to the power supply during the cleaning and he came in contact with the exposed inner core of the cable, receiving an electric shock that killed him.
Johnston was one of 500 young people killed in Australian workplaces in the last 10 years. "Hazardous work environments and practices are created, or allowed to develop, by employers, not by young workers", Michael's mother wrote in a letter to a newspaper shortly afterwards.
The NSW Industrial Relations Commission fined McDonald's Australia Ltd $120,000 and McDonald's Properties (Australia) Pty Ltd $150,000.
Johnston's death was just a minor statistic in the McDonald's hamburger chain, which employs more than 1.5 million workers globally, more than half of them under 21 years old. The fines were a tiny fraction of the US$1.32 million-a-day profit McDonald's was estimated to make in 2004 from its outlets around the world.
Most of the 56,000 workers employed by McDonald's in Australia are young workers. Many are high-school students and are paid at the lowest junior rate of $5.55 an hour.
McDonald's profits from the systematic super-exploitation of young workers, who suffer from overwork due to under-staffing, illegal working hours and few breaks, poor safety conditions, including examples of kitchens flooded with sewage and workers having to sell food that has been dropped on the floor. This type of low-paid work has even been termed "McJobs".
Overseas, McDonald's is notorious for the vehemence with which it tries to crush any attempt to unionise its employees. The corporation argues that all its workers are happy and that any problems can be worked out directly without the need for "interference".
Across the Tasman, McDonald's has threatened to smash the Unite union, which recently won victories for young workers at KFC, Starbucks and Pizza Hut in New Zealand.
Unite members and delegates in McDonald's have experienced severe victimisation and bullying, according to Unite organiser Joe Carolan (who will be visiting Australia in July).
"Many workplace leaders are having their hours cut, rosters changed to unsocial hours, or asked to find another job 'if you don't like it here'."
Unite has more than 900 members in McDonald's stores in Auckland alone. But most of these trade unionists are on the minimum wage and are highly vulnerable.
Recently, McDonald's employed the services of Tony Teesdale of Teesdale Associates, an arch union buster in New Zealand, who implemented a policy of paying non-union members more money in an attempt to destroy union membership on the shop floor.
In Australia, McDonald's has a cosy deal with a tame-cat union, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association The SDA is the biggest union in the country and covers most young workers.
The SDA has a close relationship with most employers and employer groups. This is often cited as the reason for the union's lack of militant action. When you join the SDA you get vouchers for discount "meals" at McDonald's, Pizza Hut, etc.
In March, the SDA negotiated an award for McDonald's employees in NSW that rolled back weekend penalty rates for new, part-time employees to a level less than the Shop Award they were previously employed under. It also increased the spread of hours with no compensation.
From Green Left Weekly, May 31, 2006.
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