McDonald's Announces Wage Increase For Corporate-Owned Locations, Leaving Out 90 Percent Of Workforce

Today, April 1, McDonald's announced plans to increase employee wages for its staff across corporate-owned stores (approximately 1,500 locations) in the United States by at least $1 per hour above the local minimum wage. The increase will bump some 90,000 employees to $9.90 an hour as of July, from $9.01 currently, and wages will hit more than $10 by 2016.

Those employees will also be eligible, after a year with the company, for five days of paid vacation time.

Although McDonald's would certainly like you to commend them for this move, The Wall Street Journal points out that this good news does not apply to the remaining 90 percent of its 14,350- store workforce employed by franchise owners. That leaves employees across nearly 13,000 U.S. locations in the lurch.

Furthermore, while the decision was indeed "announced very publicly," as one former Labor Department official described to the WSJ, the wage bump is hardly going to impress most critics, especially the former and current employees in the organization Fast Food Forward, who have continued to call for a $15 minimum hourly wage. The next round of protests is scheduled for April 15.