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The next president of the United States could be a former McDonald’s employee.
More than 13 percent of Americans, or roughly 41 million people, have worked at a McDonald’s restaurant at some point in their lives. That includes Kamala Harris, who worked at a restaurant for a summer while she was in college.
Harris mentioned her brief stint on the fryer when she joined the picket line with fast food workers in Las Vegas in 2019 and during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show in April. (Her order? “Quarter pounder with cheese and fries,” and barbecue sauce for dipping if she gets McNuggets).
Now, the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign is nodding to her summer job to highlight her upbringing and a platform to boost American workers that stands in stark contrast to her Republican rival Donald Trump, who “has no plan to help the middle class — just more tax cuts for billionaires,” according to a recent ad.
McDonald’s is all over influential Americans’ resumes (former House Speaker Paul Ryan and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have also worked in McDonald’s restaurants), but service worker labor unions and fast food employees have been leading nationwide efforts to improve working conditions for lower-wage workers, including calls to boost the federal hourly minimum wage to at least $15.
They could soon have a powerful advocate in one of their former coworkers.
Harris — who has earned endorsements from several influential unions, including Service Employees International Union, which supported the nationwide Fight for $15 campaign — stood with striking McDonald’s workers and protesters as she was launching her first presidential campaign.
“If we want to talk about these golden arches being a symbol of the best of America, well, the arches are falling short,” she said from Las Vegas in June 2019. “We have got to recognize that working people deserve livable wages.”
“I did the french fries and I did the ice cream,” she told workers.
“There was not a family relying on me to pay the rent, put food on the table and keep the bills paid by the end of the month,” she added. “But the reality of McDonald’s is that a majority of the folk who are working there today are relying on that income to sustain a household and a family.”
Fast food jobs are often denigrated as temporary employment for teenagers looking for summer work, echoing Republicans’ “bootstraps” mentality that frequently overlooks the more than 3 million fast food workers across the US; in 2022, the typical fast food worker was a 26-year-old woman making just over $13 an hour, according to federal labor data.
McDonald’s corporate-owned restaurants raised their hourly wage up to $17 in 2021, though roughly 95 percent of the company’s 14,000 restaurants are independently owned, with separate wage rates. The company has stated that it recognizes workers’ rights to join a union.
When President Joe Biden tapped her as his running mate in 2020, Harris renewed her support for raising the federal minimum hourly wage to $15, which is nearly double the current minimum wage of $7.25 — which has not been raised since 2009.
“Raising the minimum wage is about the floor and not the ceiling,” she said during a virtual rally with fast food workers and Senator Bernie Sanders in October 2020.
Most states have raised their minimum wages above the federal minimum, but $7.25 an hour remains the minimum wage in 20 others.
Georgia and Wyoming have set their minimum to just $5.15, lower than the federal rate, which applies instead.
Raising the federally set minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour would lift nearly 1 million people out of poverty and raise wages for more than 30 million Americans, according to the federal government’s nonpartisan budget office.
Congress failed to approve a minimum wage hike as part of a larger COVID-19 aid package in 2021. The vice president, who acts as the Senate’s presiding officer, was under pressure from a group of congressional Democrats at the time to ignore nonbinding guidance that the measure could be included in that legislation.
Fast food workers in California won a major victory earlier this year with a measure that raises the hourly minimum wage to $20. The state also has the first fast food workers union, through the Service Employees International Union, after more than a decade of labor battles and strikes at 450 restaurants to have a seat at the table.
The Raise the Wage Act, which has stalled in a deadlocked Congress, would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $17 per hour by 2029. The subminimum wage for tipped workers – which is set at $2.13 an hour — would effectively be eliminated by 2030.
Harris co-sponsored a version of that legislation when she was a senator.
Nearly 30 percent of US workers, roughly 44 million people, make less than $17 per hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The “real” value of the federal minimum wage has gradually declined, reaching a 66-year low in 2023, with its buying power worth 42 percent less than it did at its highest point in 1968, according to the think tank. “This significant loss in purchasing power means that the federal minimum wage today is nowhere close to a living wage,” according to a 2023 report.
A “real” minimum wage — if it kept pace with inflation and productivity growth — would be $23 an hour by now, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
“Vice President Harris is the daughter of a working mother and worked at a McDonald’s to put herself through college,” according to a statement from campaign senior spokesperson Lauren Hitt.
“She knows what middle-class families go through,” she added. “Donald Trump, on the other hand, is running to give more handouts to his ultra-wealthy friends at the expense of working Americans. That’s the contrast voters are going to see between now and Election Day.”
