‘Tough times’
Dustin and his co-workers had come to feel that no one understood what their jobs and lives were really like. The biggest frustration was the pay, which had been $8.25 an hour until the franchise owner boosted it by $1 a few months into the pandemic.
“We understand these are tough times,” Enrico Francani, the owner wrote in a letter to the staff, explaining the increase.
“How can you say you understand tough times when you’re only paying people $9.25 an hour?” Dustin recalled thinking.
The restaurant continued to lose long-serving shift managers throughout 2021 to entry-level jobs at Walmart ($13.75 an hour) and Tim Hortons ($12 an hour). The departures hit the Bradford McDonald’s especially hard at the beginning of the month, when disability checks arrived and customers had money to burn on burgers and fries.
“Can anyone go into work right now? They’re down 6 shifts and drowning,” Stephanie wrote on the employee group chat on Sept. 1, four days before the walkout.
A few minutes passed with no response.
“Anyone??” she asked again.
The only thing that seemed to matter to the corporate office were the numbers: revenue, drive-through times and the weekly tally of complaints. Once, Dustin worked 30 hours straight to prepare the restaurant for a health inspection. It passed, but the criticism from the bosses about the restaurant’s cleanliness and his inability to retain employees continued unabated. Heavy turnover led to more mistakes and longer wait times for customers, who took their frustration out on workers who already felt stigmatized by their fast-food jobs.
“The hate is towards the wrong people,” said Caitlin Cox, a shift manager, newly pregnant with her second child. “It’s ridiculous.” She was certain that customers, who regularly belittled the staff for enforcing mask mandates or botching orders, would judge her harshly for having a baby while “flipping burgers.” And she had come to dread the thought of working at McDonald’s while she was visibly pregnant.
In Bradford, once home to entrepreneurs and wealthy oil barons, the population is shrinking. Buildings in the downtown area are mostly empty.
In Bradford, once home to entrepreneurs and wealthy oil barons, the population is shrinking. Buildings in the downtown area are mostly empty.
The owner, ferried by his driver, typically visited the Bradford location just once a year, employees said, and not even that often once the pandemic hit. Dustin believed that Francani was relying on his Pennsylvania restaurants — with their low salaries — to offset higher costs in New York where he had to pay his McDonald’s workers $15 an hour.
Francani did not respond to a list of detailed questions regarding his Bradford location. In a statement he said that he had initiated a series of “listening sessions” with workers and was adding paid sick leave and raising starting wages in Bradford. “We’re very grateful for the outstanding efforts of the McDonald’s Bradford team,” he wrote.
McDonald’s USA issued a statement in which it said it was “disappointed” by the poor treatment that employees had endured at the Bradford restaurant: “The allegations shared in this reporting are deeply troubling and have no place in a McDonald’s-branded restaurant. Quite simply, they are unacceptable.”
Dustin understood that Francani was entitled to pay his Bradford workers about 40 percent less than his nearby New York employees. “It’s a good idea, but you’re hurting people,” he said. “At what price is it enough? At what point is it just not worth it? What’s the cost of another human being to you?”
‘A high school job’
These were some of the questions that people in Bradford were fighting about in the immediate aftermath of the walkout. Less than an hour had passed before someone snapped a picture of Dustin’s sign on the drive-through speaker and posted it in a Facebook group called “B----ing Bout Bradford.”
Most of those weighing in on the McDonald’s walkout were service workers: certified nursing assistants, waitresses, security guards and store cashiers who were barely scraping by themselves. Theirs were the voices of a place whose best days seem behind it. On Bradford’s mostly empty Main Street, Art Deco, Italianate and Neo-Classical buildings loom as a reminder of an earlier era when the city was home to wealthy oil barons and hungry entrepreneurs. The Zippo factory, opened in 1932, still ships its iconic windproof lighters all over the world. But the region has been bleeding manufacturing jobs and people for years.
“Do you have the next great idea?” asked signs from the Bradford Area Alliance offering a $20,000 prize to help seed a local start-up. Set amid abandoned storefronts, the question came off as a plea.
Some speaking out on “B----ing Bout Bradford” blasted the work stoppage as an act of entitlement — another sign of America’s moral decay and waning work ethic. “You got what you deserve when your paycheck came in,” wrote a 41-year-old father of two young boys. “Probably didn’t deserve that because it sounds like you were just there putting in time with bad attitudes instead of working to make your situation better.”
Other commenters called fast food “a high school job,” whose long hours and low pay were supposed to spur young workers to strive for more. Dustin and his crew, they said, should “go back to school,” “quit making excuses,” get a second job or move to a city with higher wages and more opportunity. Or they complained about the service at the McDonald’s (“I’ve never one f---ing time got my order right! Not once!”) and derided the penmanship on Dustin’s hastily scribbled sign. (“Maybe they should be home practicing their handwriting skills.”) The McDonald’s workers’ demands to be seen and heard had broken some unspoken rule; their anger seemed to threaten Bradford’s social order.
Others countered that big companies, such as McDonald’s, had a moral obligation to pay their employees enough to survive. “We have families and bills and can’t even get through with the pay we get,” wrote a cashier at the Bradford Dollar Tree. And they called for a higher minimum wage to match the $15 an hour that workers were making in New York.
Just like the critics, the walkout’s defenders cast the protest as a symptom of a much larger societal disease, made worse by the labor shortage and the long pandemic.
“People in the service industry are done with the disrespect,” wrote a local physician. “I don’t think it’s just about the money. … Whether it’s about flipping burgers or saving lives they crave gratitude and validation. Society has become so intolerant. So disrespectful. So judgmental. So cruel. Let’s change it.”
Soon some of the McDonald’s workers were weighing in to explain themselves and defend their colleagues. “You have NO RIGHT to talk down on those workers when they take a stand and have had enough,” wrote John Lockwood, who had worked at the restaurant for 20 years and had quit earlier that morning. “If you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, keep your f---ing mouth shut.”