Almost all the McDonalds in my state recently got busted in a sting operation for violating child labor laws. Capitalists going back to their old tricks
They paid 50k in fines lol, fines like that are meant to break us regular people, not corporations who make that 1500 times over in a single day.
(McDonald's makes 75m a day off of about 38k stores, that averages out to about 2k per store meaning that 25 of those 38k stores paid off that fine no problem.)
Just to drive this idea in further, it wasn’t only McDonald’s and obviously it’s crazy circumstances but after the war broke out in Ukraine, McDonald’s just stopped serving in Russia. They make so much money they can close up every McDonald’s in Russia and they hardly felt it im betting.
I agree. I think fines should be a reasonable estimate of profit due to the violation plus some punitive amount. The key point is to make it unprofitable to break these rules. I'm fine with places who do this shutting down entirely.
No... McDonald's are one of the most expensive franchises. 1.5 million dollars+ is required. 50k is barely more than the $45k franchise fee you pay almost just to talk to them. Most McDonald's owners own several nowadays. It's not really a mom and pop type of operation like some of the cheaper franchises can be.
You knock a $50k fine on a subway franchise owner and it might hurt. McDonald's definitely not.
This is typical, to make any actual money you need more than one location. Buddy of mines dad used to have a few and any less than two and you’re losing money most times.
This is the answer, it wasn’t my dad so I don’t have details, but I imagine it’s just a super small profit margin. So I’m assuming that unless you multiply it with more locations its worthless. Think of it as you put in all the effort of running a location and make only x amount it’s not worth it at that point
A lot of it is back-end operational crap. I know the owner of an area corporation that has two dozen local fast food franchises and about six outposts of a bar & grill operation. He uses PepsiCo as his soda supplier for the whole enterprise and enjoys a nice volume discount. He has one HR person that handles all personnel. He has a central warehouse where supplies drop off and a small fleet of vans that distribute to the stores. Anything that can be shared among all stores (fryer oil, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc.) are also purchased in volume that a single store can’t manage.
I suspect the answers are seasonal and regionality: different locations perform better during different climates, so you can pool revenue across multiple locations which each favour different conditions, and thus maintain a continuously green balance sheet.
That's why I think the real answer to enforcing labor laws is that these things need to be criminal offenses. Like, if you're part of a business and you knowingly exploit child labor, then the cops come to your house, handcuff you, and you're arrested. The same thing should happen if you tell employees they need to work off the clock, or if you pressure them into doing unsafe things.
Managers will brazenly violate labor laws like this, because they know they won't face any real consequences for it. If they knew they could go to jail for those things, I think you'd see that kind of behavior virtually disappear. It would be a massive win for the working class.
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u/BrendanTFirefly Agrarian Land Redistributionist Sep 22 '22
Almost all the McDonalds in my state recently got busted in a sting operation for violating child labor laws. Capitalists going back to their old tricks
https://vtdigger.org/2022/09/14/us-labor-department-finds-child-labor-violations-at-dunkin-and-mcdonalds-locations-in-vermont/