It’s a familiar American tale. Come up with a popular product and sell it at a good price. Create thousands of jobs and a ladder to upward mobility. If you succeed, your reward will be this: Our activist class will declare you an enemy of the people.
The target of the moment is McDonald’s. The hamburger giant finds itself in the cross hairs over a corporate program to promote financial literacy. The idea was a worthy one: to help employees learn how to save and set priorities.
But activists have taken a sample budget from its Web site and spun it as an admission from McDonald’s that no one can live on what it pays. Here in New York, it feeds into the campaign by our Democratic mayoral candidates to hike the minimum wage.
One good starting point for this debate is with an understanding of McDonald’s workers. In New York City alone, there are 234 McDonald’s restaurants with about 40 to 50 workers each. It is an exceptionally diverse workforce: high-schoolers in their first job; older kids working their way through college; retirees looking to keep busy; moms and dads hoping to pick up a few extra bucks, and so on. Just because these people are not all supporting families doesn’t mean the money — and the flexible hours — are not important to them.
The point is that not everyone there is a breadwinner. For those who do hope for better-paying careers, McDonald’s offers many opportunities to move ahead. Jeff Stratton, president of McDonald’s USA, began as a 15-year-old working the counter at one of the chain’s Detroit restaurants. In fact, McDonald’s reports that more than 75 percent of its restaurant managers, more than 50 percent of its owner/operators and more than 30 percent of its corporate execs started out as crew.
The McDonald’s story carries a timely message for New York: If you want to measure what’s best for city workers, it’s not the wage he or she starts at. It’s where that worker might go with hard work, drive — and opportunity.