In
the early years, the original McDonald’s franchise was a hoot. Teenagers serving teenagers at the greatest
teenage happening of all time. Cars packed
with them turned the nearby streets of Des Plaines into a cruising strip, radios blaring. The rock ‘n’
roll generation massed there just because the rock ‘n’ roll generation was massing
there - every night of the week. Plus
you got fries, if you wanted some, too.
Working
at the Lee Street McDonald’s came to be recognized as the best after-school job
in the history of after-school jobs, and if you didn’t get one you hung out
there anyway. It was a place where guys
could reasonably expect to check out every available girl in the greater Chicago
metropolitan area.
Living
wages never entered into it at all. Given
the job benefit, ogling chicks face to face across the counter, you’d have to
be out of your mind to care about the money too.
Over
time, the business model settled into something else, but not the part about
the after-school job. For generations, working
at McDonald’s has given kids spending money while they went through school, plus
something for the resume. On graduation,
the now young adults went out and found real work somewhere else.
In
recent years, Washington has allowed real work to be shipped overseas, apparently to the
point where breadwinners have nowhere else to turn now but fast food jobs never
meant to support a family. In
a shortsighted, ill-considered campaign of desperation, union leaders and
part-time workers are trying to bully the fast food industry into committing
financial suicide by raising wages to levels that will wreak havoc on their extraordinarily
successful business models.
At
the prices required to cover these outrageous wage demands, it’s quite possible
that nobody will buy the food. Sounds
like a lose-lose to us. No matter how
this thing goes down, it won’t be good.
What
the working poor really need is new faces in Washington. The answer is as simple as that.
