I am writing to give my views on the pay earned by McDonald's employees here
in the USA. As a former manager, I often attended meetings where
restaurants' profitability was discussed. One of the issues that supervisors
always brought up was that our average wage was above "company standards".There was even a contest last year where the restaurant which lowered the
average wage in their restaurant by the greatest percentage was awarded a
trip to Hawaii for the store manager. Meanwhile, the middle and lower
management was forced to work with lower quality people so that the upper
management could profit. An average wage of over $4.75 for the entire
restaurant (including hourly managers!) was considered to be unprofitably
high.McDonald's passed out many internal memos to managers when Oprah
Winfrey did a show regarding minimum wage paying employers, and McDonald's
was mentioned. Their public statement was that many employes make above
minimum wage. They told us how if any members of the press called an asked
how we were to refer them to a corporate number. McDonald's is a very
internally corrupt organization, in the sense the took what seems like an old
man's business, namely Ray Kroc, and have transformed it into a money
grubbing juggernaught, running over its' own employees in its' quest for more
money.Eight years ago, there were Christmas bonuses, scholorships, and
frequent outings and inter-store sport events. Now there is only the looming
figure of making the particular profit levels that are set by the supervisors
in order to line their own pockets.