What is a McJob?
A McJob is what we call a low skill, low pay, high stress, exhausting and unstable job. We call them McJobs because they are typical conditions in many McDonald’s worldwide. Helen and Dave are arguing that McDonald’s pays its workers badly. What’s the pay like at McDonald’s? I think they are right.I don’t see how you could qualify McDonald’s pay by any other term. As a firm they keep to the legal minimum – which is very low. In addition to that they have been lobbying to change the law for example to create a special, lower minimum wage for young workers, which represent a two-thirds majority of their employees. In the US they have lobbied for the introduction of this lower minimum for young workers. The pay is about as low as it can get. How significant are McDonald’s on the global scale? It’s a very important company. They employ about 212,000 people directly and through their franchises probably close to a million and a half. The direct labour force is in the same league as Nestle,
DOUGLAS COUPLAND: Oh- MICHAEL KINSEY: That’s another term which you’re credited with inventing, a very good term, I think. DOUGLAS COUPLAND: I think a McJob is, well that’s a, if I can remember correctly, it’s a zero benefits, dead end, oh God, let me try this again. McJob is- MICHAEL KINSEY: Well let me help you. DOUGLAS COUPLAND: Okay. MICHAEL KINSEY: It would be- a model of a McJob would be a job working at McDonalds. DOUGLAS COUPLAND: Well, I mean- MICHAEL KINSEY: Service sector. DOUGLAS COUPLAND: You say, yeah, I don’t know if we’re allowed to say the name of the corporation on TV. MICHAEL KINSEY: You’re wearing a Microsoft T-shirt so I wouldn’t be too reluctant. DOUGLAS COUPLAND: Okay. A McJob is just sort of a dead end, going nowhere, like zero paying, zero benefits, do you know those little Playskool figurines where, you know, you can take one out and put another person in? It’s kind of like one of those jobs there. I mean, when people say, the government says, oh people are em
McJob is a term used to describe a low paid, no future job. The term is used in a derogatory manner to describe the type of job that is commonly associated with the service industry, a low paid position for which skills are not usually required and the turnover rate of staff is high. A lot of people take a McJob to help support themselves through college, or because the job is not stressful and does not require much brainpower. However, recent reports have claimed that people are now using the McJob as a starting point in a career. The McDonalds corporation has claimed that many people who started off working behind the counter in their stores have become managers or own their own franchises. The word McJob first gained popularity after Douglas Coupland used it frequently in his 1991 book, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. Coupland used the word to describe the meaninglessness of the job: no future, low paid, low benefits, and without dignity. Every parent’s greatest fear
