Day 199 - 11 Dec 95 - Page 15
1
2 Then if we deal with the statement of Daniel Cantor which
3 is the next one in the file. October 27th 1993:
4
5 "My name is Daniel Cantor. In 1980 I was the Organising
6 Director for the Detroit Fast-food Workers Union, Local
7 222, and I am writing to relate my experience in trying to
8 organise employees of several McDonald's franchises in
9 Detroit. Although this occurred some 13 years ago, it is
10 still vivid in my mind. There were several dozen
11 McDonald's franchises in the metropolitan Detroit area. In
12 early winter 1980, following on the success we had
13 organising the workers at a downtown Burger King, we began
14 talking with employees at about 15 different McDonald's
15 restaurants. There was great interest from many workers,
16 as the basic wage in the fast-food industry is minimum
17 wage, and McDonald's was no different.
18
19 Several employee committees were formed at McDonald's
20 franchises around the city. One particular
21 franchise -- Ralph Kelly -- owned three McDonald's
22 restaurants in which the employees wanted to form a union.
23 Within a short period of time (perhaps 8 weeks) some 65 per
24 cent of the workers had signed union 'authorisation' cards
25 (the first step in winning union representation). We were
26 quite excited about this show of support and soon filed for
27 an election with the National Labour Relations Board.
28 I should say that we were a young and, in retrospect, quite
29 naive group of organisers, for we were not prepared for the
30 enormous hostility that the Company was about to
31 demonstrate, nor the unethical (and in some cases illegal)
32 acts that McDonald's would soon be engaged in.
33
34 The first thing that McDonald's did was to challenge our
35 right to have an election, but the Labour Board ruled in
36 our favour. They wanted to wear down the enthusiasm of the
37 union supporters and find out who the ringleaders were.
38 The reader should know that nearly all of the employees
39 were young (16 to 19 years old) black people. Some were
40 from strong union households (often the children of
41 auto-workers) while others were quite poor and relied upon
42 the wages earned at McDonald's, however meagre, to
43 supplement family income.
44
45 McDonald's strategy against the union had two basic
46 prongs. First, identify and isolate the 'troublemakers'
47 who were leading the union drive and, second, develop
48 programmes that would increase employee support for
49 management. In the first case, they fired a couple of
50 outspoken pro-union workers (Donald Hughes and Wendell
51 Jones) and especially tried to isolate and undermine the
52 efforts of a young black woman named Stephanie Douglas (she
53 was a star worker and could not be fired, so they changed
54 her shift and otherwise reduced her ability to talk with
55 her co-workers). Hughes (and I think Jones) eventually won
56 back pay from the Company after filing a charge with the
57 National Labour Relations Board that they had been
58 illegally fired. I also recall that other NLRB charges
59 against the Company were upheld and that McDonald's was
60 instructed by the NLRB to post an official election
