GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

might be very difficult, it might be something that is totally alien to us, but at the

times when you get driven to the brink of despair you have to do something

about it. It has actually created the biggest mass movement in America since

the civil rights movement. That is how big it is now in America and the people

joining it.

Let me set the scene though about this company and I am actually addressing

McDonalds, but, of course, it is Burger King, it is Subway, it is all these other

big fast food companies who are abusing their work force. McDonalds do not

count their profit in millions. McDonalds count their profits in billions. Their

Chief Executive earns $15 million a year and then bonuses on top. It is a

scandal when you think of the poverty that they put people in. This is not just in

America, this is going right across the world. If I said to you, “What type of

business is McDonalds?” you would all go, “It’s a fast food joint, it’s a burger

joint”. The reality is that McDonalds is neither of those two. McDonalds is a

real estate company. That is where they make their money, because they do

not only screw their work force, the people in the shops who serve the burgers

and flip the buns and toast stuff and whatever, they absolutely screw the

franchisees, the people who get into contracts which they cannot get out of and

they make loads of money. I know this, because I was one of the people who

took McDonalds to court last year in 2016. We took them to the European

Court. We presented petitions to them and I will talk a little more about that.

We joined this campaign in 2013. The first success for the Fight for $15 was in

2012 and that was in Seattle, but it was like the pebble in the pool, it has now

gone much greater. If I tell you that since 2012 in America people in New York,

California, San Jose, Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco, Los Angeles,

Oakland, San Diego, Richmond, Pasadena and a number of others are now

enjoying a minimum wage that is not great wages, but it is not the poverty pay

that they were on before. So these people, I believe, are heroes in the trade

union movement.

I have got to say that the bravery in organising and striking for a better rate of

pay, they have inspired other unions in other parts of the world, particularly

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