McDonald's hit by worker lawsuits claiming it steals wages

I would think the individual franchise owners would be on the hook for this, but deep pockets rule.

There are always crooked people out there, I was aware of one franchise owner's son who would cheat people because he knew they were illegal and afraid to complain or just plain afraid of losing their job, my people would tell me about their friends and I always told them to tell their friends to turn the guy in, cheating people is just evil.

Whenever you see these charges you can tell that a union organizing drive is underway.

Perhaps, but not necessarily. This sort of crap was SOP at the McD's franchise that I worked for nearly 40 years ago, and I can assure you that there no union organizers on-site trying to stir things up. We were just a bunch of pimply-faced high school students looking to make an honest buck.

Here's how the scam worked back then: The manager would schedule me for an 11 am to 7 pm shift, which entitled me to one "free meal" because the shift exceeded six consecutive hours. (The free meal was one sandwich, small fries, small drink, and desert.) If business was slow when I showed up for my 11 am shift, the manager instructed me and others to wait in the break room until directed to punch in. We were not allowed to leave just in case a bus showed up and the place suddenly got real busy, yet we were not on the clock getting paid for our time. Sometimes we waited 15 minutes to punch in; sometimes we were told to punch in minutes before the noon lunch hour. Then around 3 pm, the manager would tell us to punch out if business was slow, but not to leave because we would eventually have to punch back in for the dinner rush. Although we were physically at the facility for eight hours, on slow days we were paid for a lot less and because we were not punched in for six consecutive hours, we were not allowed a free meal.

I learned a lot in my years at McD's, including team-work, responsibility, and how not to treat your employees.

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