Bernie Sanders to McDonald's: Raise minimum wage to $15 like Amazon
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, challenged McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook on Thursday to join Amazon and Walt Disney World in raising its minimum wage to $15 per hour for all employees.
“If McDonald’s raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour and respected the constitutional rights of your workers to form a union it would set an example for the entire fast food industry to follow,” Sanders said in an open letter to Easterbrook. “Today, McDonald’s pays wages that are so low that many of its workers need Food Stamps, Medicaid and public housing to survive.”
Sanders has repeatedly called on the nation’s largest employers to boost minimum wage, praising Amazon this week after CEO Jeff Bezos hiked wages for about 350,000 employees. Walt Disney World agreed last August to raise the minimum wage for thousands of park employees to $15 by 2021.
McDonald’s representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The fast-food chain has drawn widespread criticism in recent years for its pay practices. While McDonald’s said in 2015 that it would raise hourly pay for U.S. employees to at least $1 per hour higher than the local minimum wage rate, the company has faced protests from workers and activists who claim it has failed to meet that self-imposed benchmark.
The Fight For $15 activist group, which has led many protests against the chain, was formed to push McDonald’s to adopt the higher wage.
“McDonald’s is not a poor company. Last year, it made over $5.1 billion in profits and rewarded wealthy shareholders with over $7.7 billion in dividends and stock buybacks,” Sanders added. “If McDonald’s can afford to give its shareholders $7.7 billion, it can afford to pay all of its workers $15 an hour.”
Sanders introduced a Senate bill last month that called for the imposition of a tax on large U.S. employers to pay for the government assistance benefits their employees sometimes require, such as food stamps and affordable housing.
