Change the Rules: We Don't Like 'Em Anymore...

There's one area, it seems, that McDonalds, Burger King, Supermacs and Subway can cooperate on: shafting its workers. This is the first we've heard of the 'Quick Service Food Alliance', but they're making a splash by challenging a pay system that has been in place since the mid-1970s. 

Essentially, they're making a constitutional challenge to the right of the Joint Labour Committee(JLC) to set wages for the sector. They have a specific problem with paying people double time on Sundays and, presumably, want to use the courts rather than the Labour relations structures already in place. Neither the Irish Times nor the Indo speculate on why that is: perhaps it's because the typical fast food worker has less chance of hiring a hotshot lawyer than, say, McDonalds. Just as employers across Ireland simply ignored the National Wage Agreement when it stopped suiting them (rather than seeking to renegotiate), this body are trying to abandon the Corporatist structure they clung to for years - one that guaranteed them little or no industrial actionand reliable profits. 

Interestingly, the Alliance have a 'contact' page on their shiny new website. Do feel free to make your views known to the good folk at the QSFA and Chairman John Grace. Just a thought: on a recent visit to KFC's, my future brother-in-law looked at the staff scurrying about. "They work so hard," he said. "They must get lots of money." If only...