TL
kelley wrote:
> Big Mac, Big Trouble
>
> It was supposed to be the start of a beautiful McFriendship. When the
> world's hungriest hamburger chain opened its first branch in Moscow, a new
> golden age of east-west relations was predicted. But 10 years on, the dream
> has gone stale
>
> By Patrick Cockburn
> 14 November 2000
>
> Natalya Gracheva thinks that she is being watched. She works in the
> security section of the McDonald's food-processing plant known as
> "McComplex" on the outskirts of Moscow. Part of her job is to watch what
> staff are doing on television monitors, but two years ago, after she
> started a trade union at McDonald's, she claims one television video camera
> was trained permanently at her back. "They are waiting for me to make a
> small mistake in my work", she says. "I wouldn't be surprised if they
> sacked me tomorrow."
>
> Gracheva, a bubbly 40-year-old woman, sounds alternatively amused and
> frightened by her experiences since she formed the union at McDonald's in
> the wake of the Russian financial crash of 1998. She remembers that when
> she first joined McDonald's, a few months after it opened its first
> restaurant in Moscow in 1990, the slogan of the company was: "We are a
> united family and we will survive everything together." But when the
> Russian economy crashed, she claims McDonald's workers found their real
> wages in roubles had dropped significantly – some say by up to seventy per
> cent.
>
> Until then, working for McDonald's, which today has some 58 outlets in
> Russia, was a prestige job in Moscow. Its 700-seat restaurant just off
> Pushkin Square served 50,000 people a day and was a highly publicised
> symbol of Western capitalism in the heart of the former Soviet Union.
> Street photographers who used to take pictures of Soviet tourists visiting
> Lenin's tomb in Red Square moved to the street outside McDonald's, where
> they photographed customers embracing a wooden cut-out of Boris Yeltsin
> with the famous yellow "M" of the restaurant in the background.
>
> This week, the McDonald's in Pushkin Square, decorated with models of
> European landmarks including Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower, was full –
> though not packed – with young Russians paying 12 roubles (30 pence) for a
> hamburger and 14 roubles for a cheeseburger. But the company has lost its
> old allure in Moscow, which 10 years ago led to 27,000 Russians applying
> for a single job and queues half a mile long outside its biggest
> restaurant. Instead, McDonald's is acquiring a much less favourable image
> among Russians for paying low wages by international standards – one waiter
> at Pushkin Square said he earned 17 roubles (43 pence) an hour – and for
> what some people see as union busting.
>
> The economic collapse of 1998 mortally wounded hopes among ordinary
> Russians that free market capitalism would improve their standard of
> living. Gracheva says the mood among the workers at McComplex changed
> overnight when they discovered that they had to accept McDonald's
> American-style work discipline, but were no longer paid such high wages to
> compensate. "It was a revolutionary situation", she says. "As their pay
> shrank, people lost their fear of being sacked."
>
> Workers who joined Gracheva's union claim they then came under intense
> pressure from management to leave. One of them, Yevgeny Druzhinin, a
> forklift truck driver, appeared in court last month over claims by
> McDonald's that he had broken an expensive piece of machinery. For his
> part, Druzhinin argued that the accusations were fabricated to punish him
> for his union activity. The judge made no link between Druzhinin's union
> activity and the disciplinary action taken by the company against him – but
> the court decided that he was not, after all, responsible for the breakage
> as McDonald's alleged.
>
> Soon after the decision, the Duma – the Russian parliament – summoned the
> McComplex workers before a special committee. The McDonald's management
> refused to attend. If they had been present, they would have heard
> Druzhinin tell the committee that: "A security officer hinted that I might
> be preparing an act of terrorism. He told me: 'You create too many
> problems. I'll have you put in prison.'" Druzhinin also claimed that the
> security officer is a former member of the KGB. Shortly after this threat,
> again according to Druzhinin, he was summoned to a local police station and
> told to keep his mouth shut if he wanted fewer problems with the McDonald's
> management.
>
> Innokenty Dukhovlinov, who worked in the food freezing department, told the
> parliamentarians: "Look, we have to work an hour in our freezer shop, where
> the temperature is minus 26 degrees [centigrade] and we have only
> five-minute breaks to warm up. One of our colleagues got frostbite on his
> penis. We regularly get ear infections." Dukhovlinov said that when he
> complained to a McDonald's personnel officer: "She told me flatly that I am
> alone and that she has the whole organisation behind her."
>
> Kirill Buketov, a representative of the Geneva-based International Union of
> Food and Allied Workers in Russia, says it is indicative of McDonald's'
> priorities that the company appeared fearful of union power. "It spends
> $2bn a year building up its image", he says. "But it sees unions, which
> might raise the pay of its low paid workers, as a real threat to its profits."
> Natalya Gracheva says that her dealings with McDonald's remind her of the
> way the Soviet Union used to work. "It operates like a totalitarian state
> with its own laws and its own measures", she says. She told the
> parliamentary committee that some of the managers working for the Russian
> McDonald's – its parent company is McDonald's of Canada – have said to her
> that they have been told to get rid of the union, or face the sack themselves.
> In theory, McDonald's should be in a strong position. The union is tiny.
> Gracheva says that there are just 17 paid-up members out of a workforce of
> 450, though she claims that "most of the workforce are sympathetic to us
> but are concerned that it will become known that they are active in the
> union". The union members are all in the food-processing plant, while those
> in the restaurants, though paid very little, are too young and change jobs
> too often to become organised.
>
> Russians also have little experience of unions which carry out collective
> bargaining with the management. In the Soviet Union every worker was a
> member of a union, but these largely confined themselves to organising
> holidays and childrens' camps. Gracheva says people are simply scared:
> "They don't know if tomorrow our leaders may not say that unions are
> terrorist organisations. Anything can happen in our country."
>
> She says that even now she feels this undercurrent of fear in herself: "I
> remember when I was seven years old I saw Brezhnev at the rostrum on TV. A
> few days before I had seen picture of the Tsar giving a speech. I asked my
> mother if there was any difference between the two since they both seemed
> to live pretty well. My mother was terrified. She told me: 'Never, ever
> repeat what you have just said to anybody at school or anywhere else.'"
>
> McDonald's in Moscow did not reply to repeated telephone calls over several
> days from The Independent asking the company to state its position on its
> struggle with Gracheva's union. However, late yesterday afternoon,
> McDonald's Russia said that the overwhelming majority of McComplex staff
> supports the current employment practices. McDonald's says working
> conditions far exceed those required by Russian employment law, and that
> they will now begin negotiations with the union. But their initial
> reluctance to comment was in sharp contrast with the company's early days
> in Moscow, when it was happy to pump out facts and figures about its
> efforts to provide fast food to Russians at low prices.
>
> Not all of this was just self-promotion. George Cohon, president of
> McDonald's of Canada, spent 14 years trying to enter the Soviet Union
> before he opened his first restaurant in Moscow in 1990. As early as 1976
> he was providing a free McDonald's bus to a Soviet delegation attending the
> Montreal Olympics in the hope of pressing his case with officials.
>
> Once established in Russia, McDonald's made strenuous efforts to Russify
> its operation. It bought its meat, potatoes and lettuce in Russia. It was
> in a joint venture with Moscow city government, which still owns 20 per
> cent of the company. Many other foreign companies operated in hard
> currency, but McDonald's operated in roubles and at prices ordinary
> Russians could afford. It hired and trained a largely Russian management
> team, in contrast with other foreign companies which rely on expatriate
> staff. However, one of the causes of the explosion of anger among workers
> at the McComplex in 1998 was that their wages collapsed with the rouble,
> while the salaries of senior managers were calculated in dollars and held
> their value.
>
> Kirill Buketov believes that McDonald's has miscalculated the growth in
> public hostility towards the company in Russia, where it is no longer seen
> as a symbol of free enterprise. He thinks it will have to negotiate with
> Gracheva. There are signs he is right. At the weekend the Russian Duma
> threatened McDonald's with an audit of all its enterprises and requested
> the prosecutor to investigate how its managers decide how much workers are
> paid. Gracheva says this is the third time that the company has promised to
> negotiate.
>
> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Russia/2000-11/mac141100.shtml