Competing with fast-food chains, restaurants and other businesses for workers, McDonald’s said on Thursday that it, too, will raise wages at some restaurants in an effort to attract employees.
The company said it would increase hourly wages for current employees by an average of 10 percent and that the entry-level wage for new employees would rise to $11 to $17 an hour, based on the location of the restaurant.
The pay increases do not affect the 95 percent of the nearly 14,000 restaurants in the United States that are independently owned, only the 650 company-owned restaurants.
Responding to a tight job market and echoing a move earlier this week by the burrito chain Chipotle, McDonald’s said it hoped the higher pay would attract as many as 10,000 new employees in the next three months, as the busy summer season approaches and dine-in restrictions are removed at many of its restaurants.
At its company-owned restaurants, McDonald’s said the average employee wage would increase to $13 an hour, with some restaurants achieving an average wage of $15 an hour later this year. All company-owned restaurants expected to be at an average salary of $15 by 2024, the company noted.
Still, that falls short of the minimum wage of $15 an hour being demanded by the Fight for $15 organization, which is backed by the Service Employees International Union. The Fight for $15 organization is spearheading a strike by McDonald’s employees in several cities across the country on Wednesday ahead of the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
A leader for Fight for $15 dismissed McDonald’s move to bolster wages, saying it wasn’t enough.
“We’ve showed up to work day after day in the middle of a global pandemic, risking our lives without proper P.P.E. or paid time off to keep your stores open and corporate profits flowing,” Doneshia Babbitt, a McDonald’s employee in St. Louis and union leader, said in a statement. “You’ve called us essential for over a year, but your announcement today proves that you’ve seen us as disposable all along.”
The strikes in 15 cities on Wednesday, she said, would go on as planned.
In 2019, McDonald’s announced it would no longer use its powerful lobbying arm to fight attempts to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour at the federal, state and local level. In a call with Wall Street analysts in January, the McDonald’s chief executive, Chris Kempczinski, said the company was doing “just fine” in the more than two dozen states that had increased minimum wages in a phased-in way.
In fact, despite having many of its dining rooms closed or with limited capacity in parts of the country for much of the pandemic, the strength of…
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