A Brief History of McDonalds Workers' Resistance Accounts McDonalds Workers Resistance Britain

workplace groups

A brief history of MWR, by MWR - a network of McDonald's workers in the UK fight ing to organise in the multinational anti-union food giant. Young, dynamic and e xciting, MWR unfortunately mostly wound down in 2004. The people who were in the original MWR group started working at a McDonalds in Glasgow, Scotland, between 1996 and 1999. Amongst our number was Shlonghoover wh o never knew where the line was, Zotard who had phat trousers, Funnywump who'd b een sacked by Burger King, Webel who read too much, Bouncer who drank too much, Casper the stoner, Why-Bird the stoner, Benjamin the brawler and Pes the fugitiv e. We worked for McDonald's for different reasons, but mainly desperation. We we re quite good workers, we even won crew member of the month awards. Then in 1998 they kept promising us bonus money and then refusing to pay it. One night in th e pub, someone got the idea we should start a trade union! Assuming there was no trade union interested in the likes of us, we decided to try and start our own. We collected signatures from 40 staff out of 60 but while we were wondering wha t the fuck to do with them, the staff turnover was so high that almost half our signatories had left or been fired. Having failed so miserably we did the only l ogical thing- we gave up. But the idea was resurrected a few months later. Damn it we thought, maybe the l aw's never going to recognise our organisation, but that didn't mean we couldn't still have one! We organised a secret underground cell of about 15 workers. Our first major action was January '99 when we disrupted the night shift with a bar rage of snowballs. We started to stick together at work and because we did such a big share of the work we were able to get away with a lot. Labour costs went u p, the pace of work went down, and we were decidedly happier than before. We eve n began to introduce direct democracy (though we didn't know the term back then) and made the wrap and call person an instantly recallable delegate. We began to challenge racism and other prejudice in ourselves and others, we were learning quickly. As the new millennium arrived, people started to drift off, managing to get new jobs or preferring the dole to McDonalds. Those of us who remained were getting frustrated; we had done all we could witho ut just getting ourselves fired. We realised it was impossible to fight McDonald s in one restaurant; we had to spread the rebellion to other McDonalds workers i n the UK and around the world. We started work on the first issue of McSues , a satirical magazine ripping the piss out of that McNews rag. Mostly the first iss ue of McSues was filled with jokes about Ronald McDonald's alleged paedophilia ( symbolic assaults on corporate imagery was our retrospective justification). We contacted some fellow workers in England and with a mixture of persuasion and th reats, convinced them they wanted to set MWR up at their restaurants. On October 12 th 2000 we went public and McSues, strangely, was an instant success. With h elp from an autonomous community group and a sympathetic printer, we printed 200 0 copies and set up an e-mail address where workers could write to get them. We advertised our rag on McSpotlight and various people helped distribute it at the ir local McDs. It was photocopied and sent all round the world from Sweden to Ne w Zealand, there were even Greek and Czech versions made! As workers started to get in touch we were greatly encouraged, lots of them were supportive and everyb ody agreed we had to do something. We opened a PO box so we could collect letter s without McDonalds catching us but someone kept knicking all our mail. Hmmm. Th at Christmas we sent senior management a card , we are still waiting for them to reciprocate. We started taking things more seriously as ails asking for advice about all different r opinions on the "anarchist platform' and thought it was a Sex Pistols/ Gary Glitter we were beginning to get a lot of e-m things. Then people started asking ou other things we'd never heard of (we tribute band). So we had to start lea

rning quick! The ideas we developed haven't really changed. Then a nice guy contacted us wanting to do an interview for The Face magazine . We'd knocked back a few journalists, but The Face , how cool is that? We continu ed to talk with different McDonald's workers all over the UK and the rest of the world. We made new friends like Workers Resistance Against McDonalds and the co ntroversial McDonalds International Liberation Front , and we sent material to w orkers who wanted to organise a fight back at their store. We started to hear in spiring stories about various campaigns of direct action at different McDonalds, times that little things were won and times it was just about revenge. We began to have a lot of information to share- even though our numbers were declining u ntil it was just Bouncer, Webel, Wump, Zotard, Casper and Why-Bird. The problem was that we knew McDonald's were hunting for us and we were so determined to kee p our heads down that we couldn't recruit anybody new to our collective. Then we expelled Why-Bird because he was a stoner who never turned up to meetings. Nevertheless, we produced a second issue of McSues , and also developed a propos al for a global day of industrial action by McDonald's workers. We also started to have regular weekly meetings instead of getting together whenever someone cou ld be assed. Here are the minutes that Casper recorded at one of our meetings. T hen there was [url= /library/mcdonalds-9-11-us-foreign-policy-war-mwr-workers]Se ptember the 11th and here's the statement on terrorism we approved[/url]. As 2001 came to an end, MWR was already a successful network and then we started working on this website. We didn't know the first damned thing about computers, we thought windows 2000 was a double glazing firm. The website looked even roug her than it does today. We worked on it day and night and Bouncer managed to del ete three days of work. Which wasn't something he mentioned when discussing the internet and labour activism . But despite it being a bit crap, our website star ted to get loads of hits, word spread through the workforce and we had more e-ma ils to answer than we could keep up with. We started to build up a large contact list and began sending out monthly bulletins. Then Loaded did an article about us which was nice. At that time we were updating our news page regularly. And th en we produced The Alternative Crew Handbook, it was probably the most popular t hing we ever did. Hundreds of workers were reading it from the first day, and ev erybody wanted to suggest their own skives and dodges- we couldn't keep up! We were performing many of the functions of a union, explaining to workers their rights, providing advice, support, or just someone to write to. We answered enq uiries on everything from rape to facial hair. MWR Midlands started up with thei r own website, then MWR Manchester, in fact MWR groups started to spring up all over the world. We were also working like crazy to publicise our global day of a ction and things were really flying - the workers were pissed! We formalised our basic principles and set up a system of local contacts. As we were going to con ferences, doing interviews and trying to contact as many workers as possible, ot hers were flyering, leafleting, putting up stickers and doing graffiti at their restaurant to advertise the day of action. When it finally came we were totally exhausted. The morning before, Bouncer had been drinking for two days, took an E , fell over a fence and woke up in hospital, which didn't really help. Like ever ything we did, our action turned into a farce. There were rumours of extra secur ity at McDonald's across Glasgow, so we went to another town, got lost, could on ly find one McD's and it was doing an all night close, so we ended up spray pain ting on a wall... nearby a McDonalds. But the next day, while we were off work l eafleting our co-workers in still another town, the International McStrike went massive! There were attempted strikes in London and Paris, a work stoppage in Mo scow, a blockade in Milan, leafleting, pickets, walk outs, sick days, thefts, sa botage, from Adelaide to Aberdeen, from Milan to Malmo, the International McStri ke exceeded expectations! And Wump ended up trying to talk in Italian on a crap mobile connected at the other end to a tanoi broadcasting to hundreds of people blockading a McDonalds in Milan. He might have managed if he hadn't been caught

short and needed a wee wee. We started to get a bit carried away with ourselves. At the European Social Foru m in Florence, we agreed to call an action to support the popular rebellion in A rgentina. At very short notice we organised the International McGo-Slow as Fuck! It didn't go quite as well as we had hoped although given it was the Saturday b efore Christmas where it did happen, it caused some queue! At this time MWR was so well known in the workforce that (pretending we didn't know anything about it ) we had to put up with co-workers quoting us all the funny bits from our site. It started to piss us off. We had managers telling us jokes we'd written and fuc king up the punch lines. Early in 2003, there was a nice article about us in Counter Punch and we distrib uted a survey to all our contacts. We began to develop a federated structure whi ch Wump now thinks was a big mistake. We produced our first and only annual repo rt that had optimistic expectations for the year ahead. MWR in Birmingham made a proposal that we should launch a pay campaign and those of us in the UK decided (eventually) that we would concentrate on a campaign to win 6.00 an hour, how we re we about to do that? We were so optimistic after the year before that we real ly thought we could scare them into putting up wages at least a wee bit. If our numbers were to grow the same way they had last year then we could offer a credi ble threat of serious disruption to normal service. But in fact people started t o drift away, leaving the job or leaving the struggle. And none of the workers i n other countries took on the work of organising the campaign over seas. We opposed war and called for and participated in walk outs and protests. We als o produced the one and only issue of MockNews, which was kind of like McSues onl y shorter and online. But things were not going well, our numbers were dropping and our democratic decision making process wasn't working too good. People weren 't participating so much anymore, it was like we had lost our ability to inspire . We had new rival organisations that were promoting discussions about cheese wh en we wanted to talk about justice! We set up an e-mail forum to link MWR and th e newer groups but only 70 people signed up and the other groups didn't really s upport or promote it. We printed fucking thousands of stickers in an attempt to kick start the pay campaign but somehow we weren't having the same effect as we used to. It was the same at work, we couldn't inspire our colleagues anymore. In fact, after so many years working at McDonalds, we could hardly bear to speak t o them. Then, after lucky clogs got to go and share our experiences with the Can adian Labour Congress, in the space of two months, the remaining members of the original MWR clocked out for the last time. The world reeled. Wump responded by doing an interview with the Japanese organisation 'Shop Fight', and another with some French Syndicalists . Bouncer responded by immediately getting sacked from two new jobs. Casper responded by rolling up some tokes. Everything fell silent until a cry erupted - "MWR is dead, long live MWR!" And so it came to pass that a new generation would come to struggle under the ba nner that had plagued McDonalds for so long. Once again the exploited were desti ned to rise up against the Tyrants. This then is our gift to you; that you may h old on to the ideals of MWR and struggle for your dignity as others have struggl ed before you. We pass you some sort of metaphorical flaming torch. It's up to y ou now Topper... More information [url=/library/interview-with-mcdonalds-workers-resistance ]Lessons of MWR - Interview with former McDonalds Workers Resistance member, 200 6[/url] MWR's website exists as a resource at mwr.org.uk