Here at Kitchenette, we've been hating on McDonald's a lot lately, and that's totally fair. By the same token, though, it's important to remember that they're far from the only unremitting font of evil in the fast food business.
Take Jimmy John's, for instance. No, no, I don't mean eat there. God no. I'm not a monster. I just meant we should all consider that Jimmy John's commits wage theft as a matter of course. It's part of their operating model, sayeth Karolis Kubelskas and Emily Brunner, two workers at separate locations in Illinois, who allege in a lawsuit that the company's central policies mandate that the company shorts employees on overtime and minimum wage, as well as forcing them to work off the clock.
Though the workers were employed by different stores, both were owned by the same franchisee. So how come they're claiming this is a systemic problem rather than a franchise one (I mean, aside from the fact that franchising is itself a blatant dodge)? Because of a computer monitoring system that mandates nightly reports to corporate HQ on labor costs, encouraging managers to get creative with the truth when it comes to workers' time sheets. The company uses such systems to encourage franchisees to screw over their workers, then uses the old franchise dodge to avoid taking any heat for it. Thankfully, the NLRB's recent decision might lead to those days finally being over. I look forward to the new ways companies will try to screw over their workers, and the spurious arguments random commenters will make trying to defend them.
It kills me that there are people who persist in believing these are isolated incidents despite the preponderance of evidence that it's a systemic problem, but then I remind myself that classism and greed have been our constant companions throughout recorded human history. They're never going to go away completely, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to fight them wherever we see them.
Images via digitalreflections/Shutterstock.