BY DANIEL
The South Puget Sound Carpenters Local 129 are involved in a labor dispute with area McDonald’s franchise owner Kim Presto. Organizers and union members have held a banner outside of local McDonald’s franchises for the past couple months.
Presto allegedly hired area contractors EMPrecision to do remodel work. Scott Jones, an organizer for the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, says EMPrecision does not comply with the union’s “area standards.”
“Area standards is what is negotiated between labor and management,” said Jones. “We monitor that for the working class. For all the working construction workers out there, we make sure that they’re getting paid what is the area standard.”
EMPrecision and Kim Presto did not respond to a request for comment. A secretary at Presto’s office characterized the dispute as between the union and EMPrecision, not between McDonald’s and the union.
“I’ve heard the response that ‘It’s not between me, it’s between the contractor and the union,’ or ‘it’s not my decision what contractor to use, it’s up to corporate,’” said Jones. “We’ve done the research, and the franchisee owner does have the choice on what contractor they do and do not use. The only thing McDonald’s requires is that they follow a certain design.”
McDonald’s corporate media relations department did not respond to a request for comment.
Beyond calling the number listed on their banner, Jones encouraged students to boycott the restaurant during the ongoing labor dispute. “What would really impact her is if people quit going to her restaurants and she really started to see an impact on her bottom line,” said Jones. If students do call, Jones recommended asking “Why are you not paying the area standard for the contractors?”
Area standards are negotiated between local contractors’ staff and their management, and the union maintains that standards apply even when the staff members themselves aren’t union members.
“A lot of the union contractors follow it, but a lot of non-union contractors that follow the standard and provide quite well for their employees. Those contractors we don’t have a problem with them, because they’re following the area standard,” said Jones.
The union is using the public image of McDonald’s to resolve a dispute with EMPrecision, who, according to Jones, doesn’t compensate their employees fairly. The union wants Presto — and McDonald’s more generally — to only work with contractors that comply with the area standards, even if the contractor isn’t unionized.
“You don’t have to be in the union if you’re following the area standards that were set up by the working class and the management, that’s fine,” said Jones. “But when you dip below that and you don’t pay what the employees are worth, when you don’t put money into a pension plan and pay for the medical like we do for our members, then it becomes an area standards campaign.”
The Olympian reports that Presto, who has been affiliated with McDonald’s for the last 37 years, recently began renovating her locations to feature McDonald’s new kiosk and app ordering systems. Presto owns five McDonald’s in the area: the westside Harrison Avenue and Black Lake Blvd locations, the eastside Plum Street location, a location in Yelm and a location in Lacey.
“By her using a non-area standard contractor that she’s driving down wages and benefits for the working class,” said Jones. “We want her to get ahold of us and say that she understands and she doesn’t want to do that anymore, and she’ll do her best not to.”
