McDonald’s Tells Struggling Employee to Apply for Food Stamps & Medicare

Did McDonald’s just have a “let them eat cake” a la Marie Antoinette movement when an employee on their McResource Line told Nancy Salgado, age 27, to apply for Medicare and SNAP aka Food Stamp assistance? Probably, that is because the global fast food giant is under attack from critics just as the young Marie Antoinette was centuries ago.

It is now regarded as journalistic libel that Antoinette ever uttered the phrase and some historians even suggest if she did, it was in the context of peasants using cake flour until the government could ship in bread flour. In the case of McDonald’s, the business is under attack from activists who want them to pay a wage roughly double the minimum wage.

For her part, Salgado is an activist employee and recently participated in the nationwide strike to demand an increase in her hourly wage from $8.25/hr to $15/hr. Proponents of the wage increase state that McDonald’s could accomplish that feat by nominal price increases. Also, the information she says she received at the McResource Line is correct. At her income level she does qualify for SNAP assistance and probably free medical care via Medicaid programs. Mentioning that fact isn’t necessarily an indictment of the company’s wage practices in and of itself.

In response to this story, McDonald’s USA said in an e-mailed statement that the video “is not an accurate portrayal of the resource line as this is very obviously an edited video. The fact is that the McResource Line is intended to be a free, confidential service to help employees and their families get answers to a variety of questions or provide resources on a variety of topics including housing, child care, transportation, grief, elder care, education and more.”

“It’s been really hard not being able to provide things — like shoes — for the kids,” Salgado said.

On The Web:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/mcdonalds-food-stamps_n_4151647.html