By Marcelle Meyer
Who doesn’t love a good Super Bowl commercial? The wave of ads from companies who pay millions of dollars for 30 second time slots during the Super Bowl are often met with a mix of laughter, appreciation and also criticism. For example, a commercial that I found infuriating was the McDonald’s “Lovin’ Pays” campaign. A seemingly kind gesture came across to me as a shallow attempt to gain approval without any attempt to change their current practices.
The ad shows McDonald’s customers ordering food and hearing a total that is not an amount of money, but instead a request to perform a “loving” action. People are asked to call their mothers to say that they love them or do a dance. The campaign will last until Feb. 14, and any customer who performs the “loving” action that is requested will receive their meal for free. Is this really the best way to spread the love?
An average McDonald’s worker makes $7.73 an hour, just barely above the mandated minimum wage. If you have been hearing lots of debate lately about raising the minimum wage, it is because it is impossible to live on this small income that one can make while working full-time.
Now, McDonald’s is going to “spread the love” by giving its customers free food in exchange for some kind of gesture. Aside from it being somewhat creepy to ask people to dance in exchange for a hamburger, this promotion seems like a disservice to McDonald’s workers, who are making barely enough to live on.
Of course, we can’t just blame McDonald’s. Many companies like Target and Walmart are also guilty of profiting from their underpaid and under-benefited employees. Horror stories about Walmart jobs often grace the news. The true problem is that American business culture tends to value the client over the employee. This is evident from the inability of Congress to pass any meaningful reform to make the minimum wage equal to or above the minimum cost of living in America.
It is also very clear from the lack of immigration reform, allowing for companies to hire illegal immigrants and pay them well below minimum wage for their labor because they cannot obtain proper documentation in the current system.
American businesses and government officials simply do not value the rights of workers to trade their skills and time for a reasonable standard of living. They value profits over the well-being and livelihood of their employees. If McDonald’s wants to spend 15 days doing something for the American public, then they should look at how much they pay their workers and ask who really deserves the free meal.
