Detecting lies

AFTER WORKING AT Burger King restaurants for about a year, the sociologist Ester Reiter concluded that the trait most valued in fast food workers is “obedience.” In other mass production industries ruled by the assembly line, labor unions have gained workers higher wages, formal grievance procedures, and a voice in how the work is performed. The high turnover rates at fast food restaurants, the part‑time nature of the jobs, and the marginal social status of the crew members have made it difficult to organize their workers. And the fast food chains have fought against unions with the same zeal they’ve displayed fighting hikes in the minimum wage.

The McDonald’s Corporation insists that its franchise operators follow directives on food preparation, purchasing, store design, and countless other minute details. Company specifications cover everything from the size of the pickle slices to the circumference of the paper cups. When it comes to wage rates, however, the company is remarkably silent and laissez‑faire. This policy allows operators to set their wages according to local labor markets – and it absolves the McDonald’s Corporation of any formal responsibility for roughly three‑quarters of the company’s workforce. McDonald’s decentralized hiring practices have helped thwart efforts to organize the company’s workers. But whenever a union gains support at a particular restaurant, the McDonald’s Corporation suddenly shows tremendous interest in the emotional and financial well‑being of the workers there.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, McDonald’s workers across the country attempted to join unions. In response the company developed sophisticated methods for keeping unions out of its restaurants. A “flying squad” of experienced managers and corporate executives was sent to a restaurant the moment union activity was suspected. Seemingly informal “rap sessions” were held with disgruntled employees. The workers were encouraged to share their feelings. They were flattered and stroked. And more importantly, they were encouraged to share information about the union’s plans and the names of union sympathizers. If the rap sessions failed to provide adequate information, the stroking was abandoned for a more direct approach.

In 1973, amid a bitter organizing drive in San Francisco, a group of young McDonald’s employees claimed that managers had forced them to take lie detector tests, interrogated them about union activities, and threatened them with dismissal if they refused to answer. Spokesmen for McDonald’s admitted that polygraph tests had been administered, but denied that any coercion was involved. Bryan Seale, San Francisco’s labor commissioner, closely studied some of McDonald’s old job applications and found a revealing paragraph in small print near the bottom. It said that employees who wouldn’t submit to lie detector tests could face dismissal. The labor commissioner ordered McDonald’s to halt the practice, which was a violation of state law. He also ordered the company to stop accepting tips at its restaurants, since customers were being misled: the tips being left for crew members were actually being kept by the company.

The San Francisco union drive failed, as did every other McDonald’s union drive – with one exception. Workers at a McDonald’s in Mason City, Iowa, voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers union in 1971. The union lasted just four years. The McDonald’s Corporation no longer asks crew members to take lie detector tests and advises its franchisees to obey local labor laws. Nevertheless, top McDonald’s executives still travel from Oak Brook, Illinois, to the site of a suspected union drive, even when the restaurant is overseas. Rap sessions and high‑priced attorneys have proved to be effective tools for ending labor disputes. The company’s guidance has helped McDonald’s franchisees defeat literally hundreds of efforts to unionize.

Despite more than three decades of failure, every now and then another group of teenagers tries to unionize a McDonald’s. In February of 1997 workers at a McDonald’s restaurant in St. Hubert, a suburb of Montreal, applied to join the Teamsters union. More than three‑quarters of the crew members signed union cards, hoping to create the only unionized McDonald’s in North America. Tom and Mike Cappelli, the operators of the restaurant, employed fifteen attorneys – roughly one lawyer for every four crew members – and filed a series of legal motions to stall the union certification process. Union leaders argued that any delay would serve McDonald’s interests, because turnover in the restaurant’s workforce would allow the Cappellis to hire anti‑union employees. After a year of litigation, a majority of the McDonald’s workers still supported the Teamsters. The Quebec labor commissioner scheduled a final certification hearing for the union on March 10, 1998.

Tom and Mike Cappelli closed the St. Hubert McDonald’s on February 12, just weeks before the union was certified. Workers were given notice on a Thursday; the McDonald’s shut down for good the following day, Friday the thirteenth. Local union officials were outraged. Clement Godbout, head of the Quebec Federation of Labour, accused the McDonald’s Corporation of shutting down the restaurant in order to send an unmistakable warning to its other workers in Canada. Godbout called McDonald’s “one of the most anti‑union companies on the planet.” The McDonald’s Corporation denied that it had anything to do with the decision. Tom and Mike Cappelli claimed that the St. Hubert restaurant was a money‑loser, though it had operated continuously at the same location for seventeen years.

McDonald’s has roughly a thousand restaurants in Canada. The odds against a McDonald’s restaurant in Canada going out of business – based on the chain’s failure rate since the early 1990s – is about 300 to 1. “Did somebody say McUnion?” a Canadian editorial later asked. “Not if they want to keep their McJob.”

This was not the first time that a McDonald’s restaurant suddenly closed in the middle of a union drive. During the early 1970s, workers were successfully organizing a McDonald’s in Lansing, Michigan. All the crew members were fired, the restaurant was shut down, a new McDonald’s was built down the block – and the workers who’d signed union cards were not rehired. Such tactics have proven remarkably successful. As of this writing, none of the workers at the roughly fifteen thousand McDonald’s in North America is represented by a union.