If you talk to people in the anti-globalisation and environmentalist movements, you will find no corporate villain so comprehensively encapsulates all that they are opposed to than McDonalds, the plastic burger giant. Its tentacles reach into almost every nation on the planet, and there is one characteristic that is consistent to McDonalds’ behaviour wherever it operates: it exploits our environment, its producers, its workers and its customers. But you are no doubt familiar with the list of moral transgressions committed by capitalistic monolith that causes so much damage for the sake of selling artery-clogging and tasteless junk food to consumers from Chicago to Delhi to Moscow to Guantanamo Bay. This post is about what McDonalds, a massive employer, thinks social change means for its future.
In an annual report filed to a US regulator, McDonalds highlighted an interesting threat to its business model:
[The trend is]
toward higher wages and social expenses in both mature and developing markets, which may intensify with increasing public focus on matters of income inequality
.
The fact is, there is a quiet revolution taking place in public opinion. Where multinationals could once ride roughshod over their employees and national governments, attracting criticism only from marginalised groups, the public is now growing less and less tolerant. The US division of McDonalds has been rocked by strikes from its non-unionised workforce as, branch by branch, workers grow tired of poor health coverage, unionbusting and rock-bottom wages. A few years ago, McDonalds would have closed down a branch at the first sign of worker unionisation (Because its fine for shareholders to organise to create profitable businesses, but ordinary people should not have such a right). However, McDonalds is about to be on the losing side of history and it knows it.
Given the perpetual shortage of jobs that exists today, the likes of McDonalds have moved from being the place for teenagers to earn a little spending money to being the providers of careers. With that transition comes the responsibility to pay a Living Wage at the very minimum. Furthermore, McDonalds has to make itself a more fulfilling and empowering place to work. That will require a transformation of the business model that catapulted the business to international prominence (and notoriety), but that should not be beyond an organisation that considers itself a radical innovator. McDonalds could seize this opportunity to be at the forefront of social change, not be dragged along behind it. But I think McDonalds identifying the trend is one thing; having the courage and vision to respond to it is quite another.