Union Fight For Rights

5 Pages 1189 Words

These days, the fast food industry employs millions of people around the world. Unfortunately, many of these people are not represented by unions. Fast food workers are forced to clean restaurants on their own time and are often compensated with food, not wages. Moreover, the fast food industry reduces costs in intolerable ways. Because employees need to have their rights protected, unions must be created in the fast food industry. For years unions have been established in several manufactures, helping people and solving their problems with giant, merciless companies and corporations. In fact, union can help workers fight for the higher wages, defend them from work without getting pay for overtime, makes them feel confidence about their future and ensure them with the respect from their employers.
According to Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, many of the fast food employees do not meet the criteria for overtime (73). Managers at McDonald’s and other chain restaurants cut labor cost by sending people home when business is slow, and programming them to work only as needed. Similarly, lots of the crew members are kept longer, sometimes up to late night hours whenever the restaurant is busy. Many restaurants practice working “off the clock in order to avoid paying overtime” (74). However, this statement misses the larger point: there are still people who work overtime without getting pay for it. Schlosser reports, ”One employee, a high school dropout named Regina Jones, regularly worked seventy to eighty hours a week but was paid for only forty” (75). Moreover, thousands of people are in the same situation like this teenage girl. It seems clear how workers are being used by their employers. People like Jones would earn twice much money if they get paid for extra hours. This strategy save a lot of money for the owners of fast food restaurants, and extremely increases their revenues at the cost of inexperience...