Af Sundeep Radesh, U-landsnyt.dk
Danmark er foregangsmodel når det kommer til arbejdsmarkedsforhold, der sikrer arbejdsgiverne profit og arbejdstagerne en ordentlig løn i fastfood-industrien
Fast food companies make sufficient profits in Denmark. Their workers have higher wages and superior benefits because they have strong collective bargaining agreements (overenskomst), which have been all but gutted out in the United States. Danish fast food servers pay less out-of-pocket for health care and other essential human services that deplete the meagre budgets of their American counterparts.
Is not this contrast of the two countries a perfect illustration of the unchecked corporate greed and extreme income and wealth inequality that are devastating middle and working classes all across the world?
The fast food industry in the USA generated approximately 191 billion U.S. dollars in 2013. By 2018, this figure was forecasted to exceed 210 billion. The majority (77.3 percent) of this large market is comprised of on-premises restaurants and drive-thrus. In 2013, there were more than 232 thousand fast food establishments in the U.S., employing over three and a half million people.
Danske lønninger afskrækker ikke fastfood-kæderne
In Denmark, fast food workers earns about 20 USD per hour about two and a half times the 8 USD their American counterparts do. Working under forty hours a week they find themselves with both time and money for beer, night outs, bills and savings.
By contrast, fast-food wages in the United States are so low that half of the nation’s fast-food workers rely on some form of public assistance.
In America fast food workers and labour activists have been screaming to have their pay raised to 15 USD per hour. “We see from Denmark that it’s possible to run a profitable fast-food business while paying workers these kinds of wages,” said John Schmitt, an economist at the Center for Economic Policy Research, a liberal think tank in Washington.
While the Danish system clearly dispels the obvious myth that industries like the fast-food business cannot survive unless they pay their workers poverty wages, many American business groups and economists say the comparison is deeply flawed.
“Trying to compare the business and labor practices in Denmark and the U.S. is like comparing apples to autos,” said Steve Caldeira, president of the International Franchise Association, a group based in Washington that promotes franchising and has many fast-food companies as members.
“Denmark is a small country” with a far higher cost of living, Mr. Caldeira said. “Unions dominate, and the employment system revolves around that fact.”
Denmark has no minimum wage, nonetheless the 20 USD an hour is the lowest the fast-food industry can pay under an agreement between Denmark’s 3F union, the nation’s largest, and the Danish employers group Horesta, which includes Burger King, McDonald’s, Starbucks and other restaurant and hotel companies.
Danish law does not require fast-food companies or their franchisees to adhere to the wages required by the agreement with the 3F union. But this does ensure peace, keeping at bay strikes, demonstrations and boycotts.
When McDonalds came here in the 1980s it learned this the hard way, refusing to join the employers association or adopt any collectively bargained agreements. After nearly a year of boisterous, union-led protests however, it had little choice but to concede.
According to the OECD, unions cover 68 percent of the workforce in Denmark compared to 11 percent in the United States.
Virksomheder tilpasser sig danske forhold
Denmark shows that companies have managed to adapt in countries that demand a living wage, and economists like Mr. Schmitt see it as a possible model. After all are not those arguing that the “fundamental differences” cannot be compared, defeating their own argument?
Mr. Schmitt, however acknowledged that it would take time for American fast food companies to adjust to higher wages. The Danes often get their work schedules four weeks in advance, and employees cannot be sent home early without pay just because business slows, unlike their American counterparts.
The difference in costs do not explain the disparities in income with a Big Mac costing 5.60 USD in Demark compared to the 4.80 USD in the USA. Measured in Big Macs, McDonald’s workers in Denmark earn the equivalent of 3.4 Big Macs an hour, compared to 1.8 of their American counterparts.
Martin Drescher, the general manager of HMSHost Denmark, the airport restaurants operator said “We have to acknowledge it’s more expensive to operate, but we can still make money out of it — and McDonald’s does, too. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be in Denmark.”
With further pride he added “The company doesn’t get as much profit, but the profit is shared a little differently, we don’t want there to be a big difference between the richest and poorest, because poor people would just get really poor, we don’t want people living on the streets. If that happens, we consider that we as a society have failed.”
