McDonald's CEO Abruptly Shifts Stance, Supports Minimum Wage Hike

Since the fast food worker protests started, McDonald’s has always taken an approach of calculated silence towards raising the minimum wage. Given that they sat in the center of the storm when it came to the pay inequality debate, it was inevitable they’d have to say something eventually.

That happened recently when CEO Don Thompson, at a talk at Northwestern University, came out in support of President Obama’s proposed $10.10 wage hike. Granted, his workers have been asking for $15, but that’s probably always going to be a non-starter (even though, as HuffPost points out, adjusting for productivity gains and inflation, the minimum wage should actually be $22/hour). “I will tell you we will support legislation that moves forward,” reads Thompson’s exact quote.

Perhaps more interestingly, in response to the oft-repeated (and psychotically delusional) refrain that paying their workers a living wage would somehow cripple businesses, Thompson took a cue from Planet Obvious:

“McDonald’s will be fine,” he reportedly told Northwestern. “We’ll manage through whatever the additional cost implications are.”

McDonald’s, of course, tried to spin it whatever douchey way they could. I won’t bother to link the full pile of PR bullshit (it’s through that link, if you really want to see it), but it mentions the Affordable Care Act and stubbornly continues to raise the spectre of increased costs for franchisees. Fortunately, it appears those cries ring increasingly hollow.

Look, we’ve been over this more. Businesses can survive paying their workers a living wage. If a portion of the cost has to be off-loaded to consumers, I’m pretty sure most people are OK with paying 20 cents more for a value meal just so the people serving them can afford heat — and those people who aren’t OK with shelling out two extra dimes are basically unequivocal monsters. Other countries make it a point to see that their citizens can actually afford to survive, and they’re doing just fine — in some cases, way better than we are. Give up the ghost, conservatives.