May, 21 2015, 01:15pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jack Temple, Jack.Temple@berlinrosen.com 734-395-8441
On the ground in Chicago: Deivid Rojas Deivid@fightfor15.org 312-219-0008
Shannon Garth-Rhodes shannongarthrhodes@gmail.com 832-545-1851
McDonald's Workers Deliver 1.4 Million Petition Signatures to Company's Annual Shareholder Meeting Calling for $15, Union Rights
Less than 24 hours after 5,000 workers marched on McDonald's corporate headquarters, the burger giant's cooks and cashiers returned to Oak Brook Thursday morning to bring their call for $15 and union rights directly to the company's shareholders at their annual meeting.
Oak Brook, Ill.
Less than 24 hours after 5,000 workers marched on McDonald's corporate headquarters, the burger giant's cooks and cashiers returned to Oak Brook Thursday morning to bring their call for $15 and union rights directly to the company's shareholders at their annual meeting.
Armed with 1.4 million petition signatures from everyday Americans calling on the fast-food giant to pay $15 and respect workers' right to form a union, the workers marched up to the gates of McDonald's suburban campus outside of Chicago, chanting "We Believe That We Will Win" and "We Want Change And We Don't Mean Pennies."
A delegation of workers wearing their company-issued uniforms continued onto the campus and brought boxloads of petitions directly to shareholders. The signatures were gathered with support of partners including MoveOn.org, Credo Action, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, The Other 98%, SumOfUs, Daily Kos, Change.org, Brigade Team, and others. The petition reads: "For more than two years, fast-food cooks and cashiers have called for fair pay, and I stand with them. McDonald's workers deserve $15 an hour and union rights. It's time to pay your people enough to survive."
"It's impossible to provide any stability for my son on the $7.50 an hour McDonald's pays me," said Safiyyah Cotton, who traveled to Oak Brook from Philadelphia. Cotton, 22, lives with her sister to save money, and relies on food stamps and childcare subsidies to support her one-year-old son. "I often get sent home in the middle of my shift if the store isn't busy enough. That makes it impossible to budget or plan childcare. And that's why I traveled to Oak Brook: to let McDonald's shareholders know that they should invest in workers, instead of further enriching wealthy executives and hedge fund managers."
McDonald's only response during the meeting to workers' demand for $15 and union rights was that the company provides job opportunities for young people. But U.S. Census Bureau data show that 70% of fast-food workers are adults over the age of 20, more than one-third of those workers are raising children, and 37% have at least some college education. "I've been working at McDonald's for 32 years and am paid only $8.95 an hour," said Felipe Mujita of Chicago. "McDonald's workers aren't kids working for pocket change - they are moms and dads."
Thursday's protest came as institutional investors with major holdings in McDonald's spoke out against the company's addiction to buying back its own stock. New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, Chicago Treasurer Kurt A. Summers, and California Controller Betty T. Yee released a joint letter highlighting their concerns about the overuse of buybacks at companies like McDonald's.
"McDonalds is facing serious performance challenges," the letter reads. "But despite a recently announced and much needed turnaround plan, the company continues to direct capital towards an aggressive share buyback program."
In an op-ed Thursday morning in Crain's Chicago Business, Chicago Treasurer Kurt Summer called on McDonald's to curb its focus on "short term financial engineering tactics" such as share buybacks, and instead concentrate on making a "long-term investment in the best interest of shareholders, employees and customers" through reforms that would ensure greater accountability for the company's leadership.
The petition delivery marked the culmination of two days of worker protests--the largest-ever demonstrations to hit the company's shareholder meeting. On Wednesday, McDonald's shut down its headquarters in anticipation of the thousands of workers, who showed up marching behind a giant banner that read, "McDonald's: $15 and Union Rights, Not Food Stamps," and chanting, "We Work, We Sweat, Put $15 in Our Check." They were joined by ministers and faith leaders from across the country, who led a service calling on McDonald's to do the right thing by paying workers $15 and respecting their right to join together in a union.
Fed up with pay that drives them to rely on public assistance, angry over the company's springtime publicity stunt disguised as a wage increase, and emboldened by recent moves by elected leaders in New York and Los Angeles to raise pay to as high as $15, workers surged into the streets outside McDonald's corporate headquarters, doubling the size of the previous year's historic protest.
The Thursday protest occurred amidst growing momentum from coast-to-coast for higher pay. It came the day after a Wage Board convened by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo held its first meeting to decide on a significant increase in pay for 180,000 fast-food workers across the state. And it came the same week that elected officials in Los Angeles voted to raise pay in the nation's second most populous city to $15.
Earlier this month of a paper in the Harvard Business Review by William Lazonick, a University of Massachusetts Lowell economist, detailed nearly $30 billion McDonald's has spent on share buybacks in the last decade. Lazonick and two co-authors argue that McDonald's should have spent that money raising worker pay, or invested it in the company, instead of using it to "manipulate" its stock price and enrich executives and short-term investors.
McDonald's shareholder meeting comes in the aftermath of the largest-ever strike to hit the fast-food industry--a 236-city April 15 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.
Earlier this week, SEIU 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. A new report this week by PSI and the International Union of Foodworkers detailed McDonald's global tax avoidance strategy and revealed how McDonalds has taken advantage of corporate tax loopholes to avoid paying up to US$1.8 billion in taxes, including AU$497 million in Australia.
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.
LATEST NEWS
100 Palestinians Killed in Weekend of Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza
Victims include 22 members of one family massacred in their Gaza City home.
Apr 27, 2025
Israel Defense Forces bombing killed at least 100 Palestinians including numerous women and children in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, while the IDF also renewed airstrikes on Lebanon as cease-fire talks between senior Hamas and Egyptian officials wrapped up in Cairo without any breakthrough.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Sunday that Israeli strikes killed at least 51 Palestinians over the previous 24 hours. Among the victims were eight people, including three women and two children, killed in an IDF bombing of a tent in Khan Younis; a man and four children slain in another strike on a tent in Deir al-Balah; and at least six people who died when a coffee shop near the Bureij refugee camp was hit.
The ministry said Saturday that at least 49 Palestinians were killed during the preceding 24 hours, including 22 members of the al-Khour family who were sheltering in their Gaza City home when it was bombed.
The IDF said the strike targeted a Hamas militant. Israel's military relaxed rules of engagement after the October 7, 2023 attack to allow an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
Saed al-Khour, who is grieving the loss of his family, refuted Israel's claim, tellingThe Associated Press that "there is no one from the resistance" among the victims.
"We have been pulling out the remains of children, women, and elderly people," al-Khour added.
Israel's U.S.-backed 569-day assault on Gaza has left at least 183,800 Palestinians dead, injured, or missing. Nearly all of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened amid a "complete siege" that is cited in an International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which issued arrest warrants for the pair last year.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces unleashed a wave of bombing attacks in Lebanon in what critics called a blatant violation of a November cease-fire agreement with the resistance group Hezbollah. The IDF bombed targets in southern Lebanon and in suburbs of the capital city of Beirut.
The IDF, which said it warned residents ahead of the Beirut airstrike, claimed it attacked "an infrastructure where precision missiles" were being stored by Hezbollah, without providing any supporting evidence.
Israel says it will continue its assault and siege on Gaza until Hamas releases the two dozen Israeli and other hostages it has imprisoned since October 2023. Hamas counters that it will only free the hostages in an exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, a complete withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza, and a new cease-fire agreement. Israel unilaterally broke a January cease-fire last month.
A senior Hamas delegation left Cairo late Saturday following days of talks regarding a possible deal for a multi-year truce and the release of all remaining hostages. The head of Israel's Mossad spy agency was also in Qatar earlier this week for separate cease-fire talks. Qatari mediators said they believed there has been "some progress" in both sides' willingness to reach an agreement.
United Nations agencies and international humanitarian groups—many of which have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war—have warned in recent days of the imminent risk of renewed famine in Gaza as food stocks run out.
"Children in Gaza are starving," the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
said on social media Sunday. "The government of Israel continues to block the entry of food and other basics. [This is a] man-made and politically motivated starvation."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Sanders: 'Oligarchy on Steroids' Poses Existential Threat to Democracy
"If we don't address that issue, the American people will continue to turn their backs on democracy."
Apr 27, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday that Democrats lack a "vision for the future," warning that Americans will "turn their backs on democracy" if elected officials fail to tackle an "oligarchy on steroids."
Appearing on NBC News' "Meet the Press," Sanders (I-Vt.) was asked about Sen. Elissa Slotkin's (D-Mich.) recent assertion that Democrats should stop saying "oligarchy" because it only resonates with coastal institutions, and whether he's "missing a chance to speak to a wider audience."
"Well... we had 36,000 people out in Los Angeles, 34,000 people in Colorado, we had 30,000 people in Folsom, California," Sanders replied, referring to the wildly popular Fighting Oligarchy Tour he's currently on with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
"I think the American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are. I think they understand very well," the senator continued. "When the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%, when big money interests are able to control both political parties, they are living in an oligarchy."
"And these are precisely the issues that have got to be talked about," Sanders said. "Are you living in a democracy when [Elon] Musk can spend $270 million to elect [President Donald] Trump, and then becomes the most important person in government?"
Sanders called out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other super PACs "that have enormous power over Democratic candidates."
"Those are issues that we have got to talk about. That is the reality of American society today. The very rich getting richer, working-class people are struggling, 800,000 people [are] sleeping out on the streets," the democratic socialist contended.
"If we don't address that issue, the American people will continue to turn their backs on democracy, because they're looking around them and they're saying, 'Does anybody understand what I am going through?'" he added. "And unfortunately right now, to a large degree, neither party does."
Sanders urged Democrats to embrace policies like fixing the nation's "broken healthcare system" and raising the minimum wage, pointing to issues on which he is working with colleagues.
"You have Democrats... talking about Trump's movement toward authoritarianism; vigorously opposing the so-called reconciliation bill to give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks for the 1% and make massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition, and housing; opposing what Musk is doing to dismember the Social Security Administration and the Veterans Administration, making it hard for our veterans to get decent health care or benefits on time," he said.
Sanders argued that the country needs more working-class people to run for office—and not necessarily as Democrats.
"You want to run as a Democrat? Great," he said. "You want to run as an Independent? That's great, but you've got to get involved in the political process, because right now the two-party system is failing the working class of this country."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Hundreds Rally in Milwaukee Against Trump Admin's 'Unprecedented' Arrest of Judge
"We reject this lawless escalation against an immigration judge who appears to be showing a commonsense and humane approach to immigrants, and stands for due process for all," said one campaigner.
Apr 26, 2025
Hundreds of people rallied in Wisconsin's largest city on Saturday to protest the Trump administration's arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan on what critics called "baseless" charges of felony obstruction after she allegedly helped an undocumented immigrant evade arrest during an appearance in her courtroom.
FBI agents arrested Dugan, 65, on Friday following an investigation, accusing her of escorting an undocumented man and his attorney through her courtroom's jury door after learning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showed up to arrest him.
Protesters chanted slogans including, "No ICE, No KKK, No Fascist USA!" and "No Hate, No Fear, Immigrants Are Welcome Here!" They held signs with messages like "Liberty and Justice for All" and "Resist Fascism!"
HAPPENING NOW: A HUGE crowd of protesters march through the streets outside an FBI office in Milwaukee in support of Judge Hannah Dugan (Video: @unraveledpress.com)
[image or embed]
— Marco Foster ( @marcofoster.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 3:05 PM
"I have never heard of a state court judge being arrested by the federal government because she chose to control her own courtroom. This is unprecedented," Sara Dady, an immigration attorney who traveled more than 90 miles from Rockford, Illinois to attend the demonstration outside the FBI field office in Milwaukee, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Wisconsin state Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-19) told the crowd: "The judiciary acts as a check to unchecked executive power. And functioning democracies do not lock up judges."
"I hope that we can all be as brave as Judge Dugan was," Clancy added.
Janan Najeeb, one of the leaders of the Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine, told rallygoers: "The courtroom is not a hunting ground for ICE. It is a sanctuary. When our government turns our courtrooms into traps, they are betraying the very laws that they claim to defend."
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights director Angelica Salas said in a statement that "in an unprecedented move against members of the judicial branch, the Trump administration is exercising authoritarianism to degrees that should alarm us all."
"We reject this lawless escalation against an immigration judge who appears to be showing a commonsense and humane approach to immigrants, and stands for due process for all, and against wanton disregard for our Constitution," Salas added.
Critics have called Dugan's arrest part and parcel of President Donald Trump's attacks on immigrants, the nation's system of checks and balances, and the rule of law.
"The Trump administration deserves zero benefit of the doubt here. It has evinced utter contempt for due process and the rule of law since inauguration day," Ryan Cooper, managing editor of The American Prospect, wrote on Friday. "It has deported numerous legal residents, most notably Kilmar Abrego García, to an El Salvador torture dungeon, and is openly disobeying a 9-0 Supreme Court decision to bring García back."
"The ongoing mass layoffs of federal workers and outright dismantling of legislatively mandated agencies being carried out by Elon Musk and DOGE is blatantly unconstitutional," Cooper added, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency.
Among those pushing back against Dugan's arrest are Wisconsin Circuit Judge Monica Isham, who wrote in an email to other judges: "Enough is enough. I no longer feel protected or respected as a judge in this administration. If there is no guidance for us and no support for us, I will refuse to hold court."
"I have no intention of allowing anyone to be taken out of my courtroom by ICE and sent to a concentration camp, especially without due process as BOTH of the constitutions we swore to support require," Isham added. "If this costs me my job or gets me arrested, then at least I know I did the right thing."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular