Real Budget Of McDonald's Workers, Plus Petition To Change Payment Method
McDonald's has always had controversy about their labor, and while the movement for living wage among workers (about $15 an hour) has grown in the past couple of months, progress has yet to be made.
Most recently, McDonald's teamed up with VISA to help their workers budget their income, saying a sample income was about $2,000 a month. Instead, CNN decided to ask real McDonald's workers what their salary was, and it turns out that the highest paid of the four employees they found was only $1,000 a month. And that person worked at $7.40 an hour to raise two kids. Most of the workers do not have two jobs, and oftentimes their budget forces them to dip into savings or do without.
In other labor law news, the former employee who sued McDonald's after being forced to accept her wages on a debit card has started a petition, gathering more than 280,000 signatures on Change.org. Natalie Gunshannon, who claimed that the JP Morgan Chase debit card carried fees that could lower her pay, such as a $1.50 fee for ATM withdrawals, a $10 inactivity fee, and a $0.75 online payment fee.
"Since I quit, I've found out that paying employees through these cards with fees attached is a growing trend among dozens of major employers. The New York Times reported that last year roughly 4.6 million active payroll cards were issued by companies like McDonald's," Gunshannon wrote on Change.org. She want McDonald's to allow their employees to choose their form of payment. "I think everyone should be given the choice of what they want to do with their hard-earned money," she writes. And most likely, judging from the budget CNN uncovered, they're paying for transportation, food, and their children's needs.