Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden showed sympathy for a beleaguered McDonald’s worker, but his tough words about the fast food giant got nearly every detail wrong.
At a roundtable organized by the Service Employees International Union, a single mother told Biden about her struggle to take care of her son as COVID-19 has shuttered his school, while her pay barely allows her to get by.
"I don’t get any kind of benefits," said Adriana Alvarez. "No parent who works hard and plays by the rules should have to go through what McDonald’s is putting us through."
Biden commiserated, saying McDonald’s relies on a strategy to suppress wages.
"McDonald’s is making billions of dollars, but here’s the deal," Biden said July 22. "They’ve made you all sign noncompete contracts that you cannot go across town to try to get a job at Burger King. And maybe, and I’m not saying you could, but you get 25 cents an hour more. People who are hourly workers are required to sign noncompete: ‘I will not go anywhere to any business like the one I’m in to get a raise.’"
Line employees at McDonald’s franchises don’t command high wages, but Biden was wrong about the use of noncompete contracts.
Factcheck.org found several problems with this claim. Biden campaign spokesman Micheal Gwin said that Biden was making the larger point that low-wage workers face barriers to moving to better paid work.
Mixing clauses: noncompete and no-poachBiden said McDonald’s workers sign employment contracts with language that blocks them for working for a competing fast food chain such as Burger King.
They don’t. A noncompete agreement prevents someone from working for a competitor. That was not the case. Any McDonald’s worker who quit to work at a Burger King is free to do that.
There was a time when they faced a different hurdle. They were blocked from moving from one McDonald’s franchise to another McDonald’s franchise. That is what economists have dubbed a no-poaching clause, and it applies only among franchises within the same chain.
Until 2017, that was part of the agreement between the local franchise owners and McDonald’s Corp., the franchiser. The local owners could not lure workers away from each other.