A few low-wage corporations have been talking a good game lately about how they're doing better for workers, what with big talk designed for headlines and shallow reporting, about their raises that leave workers
still eligible for government aid and their raises that only apply to
a small percent of workers. But don't buy it.
First, when low-wage workers start organizing and fighting back and demanding more, and they're getting attention and winning wage theft settlements and mobilizing more and more workers, and then the companies they work for start giving raises that go a fraction of the way to what workers have been fighting for ... give credit to the activists, not the company. The company, be it Walmart or McDonald's, is looking to slow the organizing momentum by making some workers feel like they've won as much as they can and by getting the media to take the ongoing fight less seriously.
Second, sometimes they're not just looking to fool the workers and the media, they're looking to game the law:
McDonald’s has a strong interest right now in demonstrating corporate goodwill toward employees because the National Labor Relations Board, led by Obama appointee Richard Griffin, is trying to hold the company jointly liable for illegal reprisals, including firings and reduced hours, allegedly leveled by franchisees against Fight for $15 protesters in 2012. In administrative law hearings that began this week in New York City, the NLRB Office of General Counsel prepared to present its case that McDonald’s ought to be classified a “joint employer” with its franchisees. The case is “absolutely monumental for the company,” McDonald’s attorney Willis Goldsmith said Monday.
Immediately after the announcement, the International Franchise Association, which has actively pressed the Hill to reject the NLRB case against McDonald’s, released a statement from its president, Steve Caldeira, saying the raise was a “reminder to policymakers, government agencies and unelected regulators at the NLRB and the Department of Labor that McDonald’s and all franchisors are not joint employers with their franchisees and make separate and independent decisions about the wages and benefits for employees over which they exercise direct and immediate control.”
It just goes to show you can never be
too cynical about bottom-feeding low-wage employers.