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For Immediate Release
May, 20 2015, 08:30am EDT
Contact:
Jack Temple, Jack.Temple@berlinrosen.com, (646) 200-5280
Thousands of Cooks and Cashiers To Wage Largest-Ever Protest at McDonald's Shareholder Meeting
McDonald's workers Wednesday and Thursday will wage the largest protests to ever hit the company's shareholder meeting. Joined by other fast-food cooks and cashiers and clergy from across the country, the workers will call on McDonald's to invest in the company and its workers, not wealthy hedge fund executives. The protest comes just days after a paper in the Harvard Business Review detailed nearly $30 billion McDonald's has spent on share buybacks in the last decade, money that could have been spent to raise workers' wages.
Wednesday, May 20 at 12:00 pm CT
Oak Brook, Ill.
McDonald's workers Wednesday and Thursday will wage the largest protests to ever hit the company's shareholder meeting. Joined by other fast-food cooks and cashiers and clergy from across the country, the workers will call on McDonald's to invest in the company and its workers, not wealthy hedge fund executives. The protest comes just days after a paper in the Harvard Business Review detailed nearly $30 billion McDonald's has spent on share buybacks in the last decade, money that could have been spent to raise workers' wages.
Wednesday, May 20 at 12:00 pm CT
What: Day 1 of Protests
Who: McDonald's workers
- Mary Kay Henry, president of Service Employees International Union
- Rev. William Barber II, convener of the Moral Mondays movement and pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, NC
- Rev. Marilyn Pagan Banks of North Side Power/A Just Harvest in Chicago, Ill.
- Rev. Rodney E. Williams of the Swope Parkway United Christian Church in Kansas City, MO
Where: McDonald's Corporate Headquarters, 2111 McDonald's Drive, Oak Brook, IL 60523
Thursday, May 21 at 7:00 am CT
What: Day 2 of Protests
Who: McDonald's workers, other fast-food workers, clergy
Where: Corner of Jorie Blvd & Forest Gate Drive, Oak Brook Ill.
Background
McDonald's shareholder meeting comes in the aftermath of the largest-ever strike to hit the fast-food industry--a 236-city walkout in every corner of the United States that included strikes and protests in 40 countries and 100 cities around the globe, from Amsterdam to Zurich.
In addition to strikes and slumping sales, McDonald's approaches its annual meeting facing a host of business challenges at home and abroad.
In the United States, the federal government is accusing the fast-food giant of rampant labor-law violations, and is arguing that the corporate parent, not just franchisees, are responsible for the illegal actions. McDonald's workers in three states filed class action lawsuits alleging wage theft and cooks and cashiers filed a federal civil rights suit alleging rampant racial discrimination at stores in Virginia. Workers also filed more than two-dozen complaints in 19 cities with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration alleging McDonald's workers are being burned on the job, with many told to use condiments like mustard to ease the pain. Meanwhile, scrutiny is increasing on the public cost of the company's low wages.
Last week, in the Harvard Business Review, University of Massachusetts Lowell Economist William Lazonick wrote that McDonald's has spent nearly $30 billion on share buybacks in the last decade, enriching investors and executives at the expense of workers and franchisees and exacerbating inequality. And earlier this week, the Service Employees International Union petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to launch an investigation into the nation's $800 billion franchise industry, calling the dramatic imbalance of power between franchisors and franchisees, "abusive and predatory."
Overseas, McDonald's is being accused by a coalition of trade unions and the UK-based NGO War on Want of avoiding more than EUR1 billion in taxes over the last five years. The European Commission's Directorate of Competition launched a preliminary investigation to find out whether McDonald's entered into an illegal deal with Luxembourg that allowed it to avoid taxes.
In Brazil, a coalition of trade unions has filed two lawsuits accusing the company of widespread and systematic labor and health and safety violations. One of the suits accuses McDonald's of "social dumping," an anti-competitive practice that drives standards down for workers across the country, and seeks to prevent the company from opening new stores unless it complies with Brazilian law. Also, McDonald's agent in Latin America and the Caribbean, Arcos Dorados, has come under scrutiny in recent weeks, with an investor group asking the New York Stock Exchange to review the company's corporate governance. And in Japan, an investor group is calling on McDonald's Japan to dismiss internal directors and replace them with external ones.
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Amid Fears That World War III Has Already Begun, Russia Strikes Ukraine With New Missile
“I really believe the situation is very dangerous,” said one Russian politics expert during a week in which the two countries exchanged strikes.
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Voices on both sides of the war between Russia and Ukraine have issued ominous statements during a week when the two countries traded escalatory missile strikes.
Russia launched a strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro using an experimental, hypersonic missile Thursday, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The attack followed Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory using western-made, long-range missiles.
"This is an escalation," said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center toldThe New York Times. "I really believe the situation is very dangerous."
Moscow's missile was fired using a conventional warhead but "it could be refitted to certainly carry ... different types of conventional or nuclear warheads," Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said. Singh also described it as an "intermediate range ballistic missile."
Initial reports from Ukrainian officials said that the strike was an intercontinental ballistic missile, in contrast to Putin's characterization of the missile. According to the Financial Times, officials from Ukraine, Russia, NATO, and the U.S. have offered different exact classifications for the weapon.
Putin, in a televised address, made clear that the move was in response to Ukraine's use of western-made weapons to strike deeper into Russia.
The Ukrainian government had long sought the permission of western governments to use weapons like American-made Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, and U.K.-produced Storm Shadow missiles. The U.S. began supplying the Lockheed Martin-produced ATACMS earlier this year, according to Defense One, but imposed restrictions on their use due to the escalatory implications of Ukraine using them to strike targets far inside Russian territory.
Ukraine launched strikes using both of those weapons this week following a policy shift from the Biden administration allowing their use, which at least one foreign policy expert cautioned was a "needlessly escalatory step."
"From that moment, as we have repeatedly underscored, a regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character," Putin said in his address, according to Reuters.
The comments come days after Putin also codified a change to the country's nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for potential nuclear weapons use.
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The comments were in reference to the fact that Russia is enlisting the help of outside allies, such as North Korea, in its military effort.
Elsewhere, foreign policy experts cautioned against escalatory spiral.
Anatol Lieven, the director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, offered an argument against what he sees as the underlying rationale of allowing Ukraine to attack Russia with U.S. and U.K.-supplied long range missiles.
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U.S. intelligence analysts have also warned that granting Ukraine the ability to use U.S., French and U.K.-supplied long-range missiles could prompt forceful retaliation by Russia; additionally, analysts cautioned that the missiles would likely not fundamentally change the course of the war.
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The World Food Program offered a stark warning for the coming year Friday in its assessment of the escalating global hunger crisis: Due to climate catastrophe and violent conflicts around the world, without adequate funding, "2025 will be a year of unrelenting crises" that drive more people into food insecurity and starvation.
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That amount is a fraction of what the world's wealthiest countries—particularly the United States—put toward military spending in a year.
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"Global humanitarian needs are rising, fueled by devastating conflicts, more frequent climate disasters, and extensive economic turmoil. Yet funding is failing to keep pace," said Cindy McCain, WFP executive director.
With $16.9 billion, the WFP said it could assist 123 million people who are most vulnerable to extreme hunger.
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More than 90% of people in Gaza are now "acutely food insecure," with 16% living in "catastrophic conditions," according to the United Nations.
"We urgently need financial and diplomatic support from the international community: to reverse the rising tide of global needs, and help vulnerable communities build long-term resilience against food insecurity."
People in Haiti and the sub-Saharan African countries of Mali, Sudan, and South Sudan were also identified as being most at risk for extreme hunger, with the region called "ground zero" for the humanitarian crisis.
Over 170 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are "acutely" food insecure, said the WFP. The region "accounts for 50% of WFP's projected funding needs in 2025," driven by climate extremes as well as violent conflicts in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Sahel region.
The U.N. Famine Review Committee in August declared that famine had taken hold in a camp where hundreds of thousands of people live in North Darfur, Sudan, after being forcibly displaced by the civil war there.
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Although the figure represented progress from Thursday, when there was a placeholder "X" for the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance, Oil Change International global public finance manager Laurie van der Burg still stressed that "this text is an absolute embarrassment. It's the equivalent of governments handing the keys to the firetruck to the arsonists."
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"The central demand coming into COP29 was for a strong, science-aligned climate finance commitment, which this appalling text utterly fails to provide" Cleetus highlighted. "Wealthier nations seem content to shamefully renege on their responsibility and cave in to fossil fuel interests while unjustly foisting the costs of deadly climate extremes on countries that have contributed the least to the climate crisis."
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Power Shift Africa director Mohamed Adow said that "our expectations were low, but this is a slap in the face. No developing country will fall for this. What trick is the presidency trying to pull? They've already disappointed everyone, but they have now angered and offended the developing world."
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