Local 420 Fights Big Mac Attack

NEW YORK CITY

A craving for profits at New York City’s Health and Hospital Corporation (HHC) has put anti-union McDonald’s in two public hospitals, replacing employee cafeterias and the public jobs it took to run them.

Local 420 Municipal Hospital Workers Union (D.C. 37) has been fighting the attack for over a year now and has had considerable success. While McDonald’s restaurants have opened at Queens and Elmhurst Hospitals in Queens, several other contracts for the fast-food outlets in public hospitals have been put on hold, and hospital-employee boycotts have put a serious dent in business, especially at Queens Hospital.

James Butler, president of Local 420, notes: “Some of the patients that hospitals treat are sick as a result of eating unhealthy and fatty foods like those McDonald’s serves. Now HHC is putting health care workers in the position of eating the same kind of food. That’s insane.”

Attracted by a promise from McDonald’s to invest up to $1 million in capital improvements in the hospital facilities and 5 percent of monthly gross sales or $250,000, whichever is greater, HHC invited McDonald’s to bid on the hospital cafeteria services. In addition to serving up fat-loaded food and taking public jobs, McDonald’s is known for hiring part-time, non-union, low-wage labor.

A grievance is pending against the city for violating its citywide contract with employees in privatizing the cafeteria services. To date, however, no public employees have been laid off due to the cafeteria privatization.

Says Butler, this is just another “back-door way” for the city to privatize as many services as possible.