Tutorial : McJobs

“MNCs’ which control more than 33% of the world’s productive assets account for only 5% of the world’s direct employment.”

• Young, mainly teens and early twenties

• earning minimum wage (or below)

• Young, mainly teens and early twenties

• earning minimum wage (or below)

• Most retail and service employers tend to view their employees as children: students looking for summer jobs, spending money or a quick stopover on the road to a more fulfilling abd better-paying career i.e. these are great jobs for people who don’t really need them. (Klein:2000, p.232)

McJob

• Low-skill

• Low pay

• High stress, exhausting

• Unstable

‘An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, especially one created by the expansion of the service sector.’

‘Working in Nike Retail will be rewarding, it will be challenging, it may well be a step towards something bigger, but it is most definitely not just another job. You'll be an ambassador of the Nike brand – everything we stand for: drive, determination, the unyielding commitment to excellence, these all will be a part of your everyday experience.’ (from www.nike.jobs.com in 2007)

‘Here was the true McDonald’s workforce, the company seemed to be saying: happy, contented, and just passing through.’ (Klein 2000: 241)

Young workers:• Are more easily employed on part-time

contracts (because they have other commitments such as school and college)

• They can be paid lower wages (because they are usually not supporting a family and tend to live in the family home)

• They are easier to control (because they have less experience of work-place politics)

• They tend to be moving on – it is not a permanent career move for the majority, and so staff turn-over is fast.

Anti-Unionization

• 10 McDonald’s managers arrested for violating labor laws and trade-union rights in Germany (1994)

• Two workers fired for organising strikes in Ohio (1998)

• Wal-Mart threated to shut down store where workers were about to vote on whether to join union, Ontario (1997)

• Starbucks shut down Vancouver distribution plant after workers unionized (1997)

• McDonald’s shut down outlet before union certification issued, Quebec (1998)

“While the concept [of a living wage] is romantically appealing, it ignores the practicalities and realities of our business environment.”

--Company President of Borders in 1997

cited in Klein 2000: 239

Part-Timers

Free Work!

“(Workers have) contributed five or six thousand dollars’ worth of uncompensated work to various media conglomerates.”

Jim Frederick

Temps : The Rented Worker

“These companies all have the formula. They don’t take you on full time. They don’t pay benefits. Then their profits go through the roof.”

Laura Pisciotti, UPS Worker on strike

“More companies are outsourcing entire functions and divisions to outside agencies charged not only with staffing – just like the EPZ factories - but administration and maintenance.

“In 1993, American Airlines outsourced the ticket counters at 28 U.S. airports to outside agencies. Around 550 ticketing agent jobs went temp and some workers who had earned $40,000 were offered their same job back at $16,000.”

Microsoft - The ‘Employee-less’ Corp

• Core: permanent jobs, benefits, stock-options, youthful corporate ‘campus’

• Periphery: – Not on payroll– contractors– Flexibility to be sent home– Tax-free

Stroking

“For years the McDonald’s Corporation has provided its managers with training in ‘transactional analysis’, a set of psychological techniques popularized in the book I’m OK—You’re OK (1969). One of these techniques is called ‘stroking’—a form of positive reinforcement, deliberate praise, and recognition that many teenagers don’t get at home. Stroking can make a worker feel that his or her contribution is sincerely valued. And it’s much less expensive than raising wages or paying overtime.” (Schlosser 1992: 74)