Fight for 15: May Day McJobs
the worker’s struggle has not stopped
I wrote this piece in 2013 for my “Social Theory” course at UC Berkeley with Professor Michael Burawoy. The paper was written to demonstrate the beginnings of my understanding of social theory by applying the theories to real life scenarios. While I could edit it to strengthen and correct the theoretical argument, I’m sharing it with minimal editing on May Day to remind us of the constant struggle low wage workers face. This piece does not even begin to touch on the intersections of race, disability, gender, sexuality, or the global ramifications and nature of the destruction that capitalism entails.
Note: According to a quick google search, it appears that Moo Cluck Moo is now working at a different pay scale.
The news of recent minimum wage strikes across the United States has both hidden and highlighted a burger joint by the name of “Moo Cluck Moo” in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Owners Brian Fisher and Allen Parker take pride in paying their employees $15 an hour, more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25. In a time where most fast food employee are making anywhere from $7.25 to $9.00 as base pay, $15/hour is a quite the shocker. Interviews with the owners cite a need for bare minimum in terms of their own salary versus the salary of their employees. I want to use Marx and Engels’ theories to explain how Moo Cluck Moo can willingly to pay their employees this wage in such a competitive capitalist society.
To begin, we must go back to the text of Marx and his key ideas on capitalism as a mode of production.
“…As labour becomes more unsatisfying, more repulsive, competition increases and wages decrease. The worker tries to keep up the amount of his wages by working more, whether by working longer hours or by producing more in one hour.” (Marx 214–15).
Labour has indeed become more unsatisfying in many ways, yet wages are not making up for this fact. Companies like McDonald's continue to pay their employees near minimum wage salaries despite the fact that they sometimes barely meet the federal poverty line guidelines. At the end of the day, the job market is not what it once was, leading to a very rapid turnover; there is always someone to replace employees who inevitably quit. These big companies exemplify Marx’s ideas that the wage-worker must take a second job or offer himself at the same or lower price, causing him to compete against himself in the form of other men and women.
How does a small business come along and so valiantly defy this notion in a society where it is almost encouraged to pay one’s employees a minimum wage salary? Wage Labour and Capital helps to explain this phenomenon.
Those working the McJobs are making the wage minimum, enough for the species of proletariat, not the individual, to survive (Marx 206). Those working at Moo Cluck Moo on the other hand, are making a true means of subsistence and reproduction. Each worker is replacing “what he consumes [and giving] to the accumulated labor a greater value than it previously possessed,” just as he stated, only one is being paid more fairly (Marx 209). Wage is still determined “by the price of the necessary means of subsistence,” but at Moo Cluck Moo it is not being subsidized by the government. Moo Cluck Moo pays a true living wage based on today’s definition, around $31,200 just for “flipping burgers.” Assuming McDonald’s workers truly make the wage cited at the beginning of this paper leads to an annual salary of $15,080-$18,720. These figures presume that someone is actually working for 52 weeks of constant 40-hour employment. According to Fast Food Forward these numbers for NYC are inflated, as they claim that the average yearly salary for a fast food worker is only $11,000 annually. Compare this to the federal poverty guidelines for a family of one and two at $11,490 and $15,510 respectively. Considering that many adults are falling back down the employment ladder, it is more accurate to look at the poverty guidelines for a family of two or more. Without the help of governmental programs like welfare or SNAP, it may not have taken so long for the minimum wage strikes to happen. Wages would truly be too low and overproduction would occur, leading to a crisis around every ten years.
Moo Cluck Moo differs in many ways from the big corporations. This organization only employs about nine people in one restaurant, versus 1.8 million employees in more than 34,000 restaurants worldwide in the case of McDonald’s (AboutMcDonalds.com). Moo Cluck Moo’s overhead is also much smaller, allowing them to pass on some of their surplus to their employees.
“Moo Cluck Moo’s owners understand that investing in their workers raises productivity, lowers turnover, and creates a better standard of living for the people they rely on to make their business profitable” (Cook).
All this is to say that the reason the monopolies can coexist with small businesses like this is due to the fact that these petit bourgeois capitalists are the exception, not the rule. Their business model is much closer to communism than capitalism, falling somewhere in the realm of socialism. Moo Cluck Moo is an example of the “practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialized character of the means of production” (Engels 712). This, as Marx states, leads to “direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and enjoyment,” because the system of capitalism and its crises leads the way to accomplishing the revolution that Marx and Engels are so keen on.
Moo Cluck Moo appears to me to be a sign that we have well developed modes of production in the United States. In addition, we are becoming more aware of the productive forces as a social force, leading to the eventual state-owned property and the state dying out. Marx and Engels would agree that this peculiarity is not so peculiar when one looks at the whole scope of the industry. By raising the wage and therefore quality of life for their workers, Moo Cluck Moo has found a way to increase the realm of freedom and decrease the world of necessity that is an all too present reality for many Americans working these McJobs. Let us see how they do in terms of profit after their first year.
Works Cited
About McDonalds. McDonald’s, 2010–2013. Web. 7 October 2013
Cook, Lisa. “Combating inequality in America a concern without equal.” Detroit Free Press. 7 October 2013. Web. 7 October 2013
Fast Food Forward. Fast Food Workers Committee. Web. 7 October 2013
Kryska, Lissa. “Beyond the minimum wage.” The Michigan Daily. 22 September 2013. Web. 7 October 2013
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert C. Tucker. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978. Print.
Skid, Nathan. “Moo Cluck Moo’s $15-an-hour story starts with a lesson in minimum wage.” Crains Detroit Business. 11 September 2013. Web. 7 October 2013
Learn more about the March on McDonald's and the Fight for 15 here.
