The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) have both just recently announced they were raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour. Yesterday, Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders publicly called out McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) CEO Steve Easterbrook on his company’s minimum wage policy. Should McDonald’s boost wages?
Should McDonald’s Boost Wages? Bernie Sanders vs. McDonald’s
If Amazon and Disney can pay $15 an hour, so can McDonald's, which made $5.1 billion in profits last year.
My message to McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook: No one in America, especially those working for a profitable corporation like McDonald’s, should be living in poverty. pic.twitter.com/puBA7nSRcP
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) October 4, 2018
“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 wrote in his letter.
The Vermont Senator said he’s talked to employees of the fast food joint and they’ve complained that their current pay makes getting by extremely difficult and many need federal assistance. Sanders adds that McDonald’s isn’t a poor company and raised $5.2 billion in profits last year.
However, if McDonald’s boosts its wages, there could be consequences. The company has already started installing electronic ordering systems in their restaurants, bypassing the need for more employees at the counters.
When Amazon announced it was raising its wage to $15 an hour, it later announced that it would be removing its monthly bonuses and stock awards. Amazon’s response was its employees would prefer the “predictability and immediacy of cash” compared to its award and bonus system.
If McDonald’s boosts wages, it remains unknown what catch they might throw in.
The People Speak Out
Not everyone was a fan of Sanders’ letter though. One person responded to his letter and said:
https://twitter.com/JPRaspenJr/status/1047878932610076678
The conversation continued with another Twitter user jumping in:
https://twitter.com/JPRaspenJr/status/1047899905413586947
There is a trend among these comments that has to do with low-paid employees being replaced by automation. Is this the future if McDonald’s boosts wages, or other companies for that matter?
The average CEO can’t be replaced by a high school teenager like a burger flipper at McDonald’s, that’s just a sad truth that’s getting worse with automation and robots replacing low skill workers everyday.
— Rusty (@cajun_ice) October 4, 2018
What are your thoughts? Should McDonald’s boost wages? Let us know in the comments below.
MCD Stock Movement
According to Yahoo Finance, MCD is currently trading at $166.80 a share, up $1.00 (0.60%).
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