“When I heard I would be speaking in a chapel, I decided I would have to give a sermon,” said leading social critic and bestselling author Eric Schlosser who spoke at the 2005 Annie Sonnenblick Lecture on March 2 in Memorial Chapel. Before an audience of hundreds, Schlosser shared his wisdom on the topics his name has become synonymous with: the American workplace, economy, culture, and most of all, fast food.
“Writing about the fast food industry is writing about America,” Schlosser said, referring to his bestselling investigation, “Fast Food Nation.” Beyond just the food, he said, the explosion of the fast food industry that has taken place in the last fifty years has had wide-ranging and long-lasting cultural repercussions, especially on labor.
“Today there are 30,000 McDonalds [restaurants] and they are one of our country’s top five employers,” he said. “McDonalds does not want people who know how to cook, but people who can follow instructions. The knowledge [needed for the job] is built into the machinery and operating system.”
The ideal goal of McDonalds is to have an interchangeable workforce with little or no training and a very quick turnover, he said.
“[Founder of McDonalds] Ray Krock perfectly summarized the fast food attitude when he said ‘We have found that we cannot trust people who are nonconformists,’” Schlosser said. “They don’t want workers toying with the flavor of the Filet of Fish. They want them reheating frozen filet of fish.”
Schlosser pointed out that the rise of the fast food industry in America directly mirrors the fall of the minimum wage.
“The fast food industry works very hard with its Republican allies in Congress to keep the minimum wage low,” he said. “There is a reason that these service level jobs are called McJobs. There are now many, many companies emulating the McDonalds model of low pay, no benefits and no training, who see workers as being interchangeable, disposable, and totally under control of the management.”
Schlosser also spoke of another business trend he concluded was directly instigated by McDonalds: the movement of large corporations against labor unions.
“It is very rare to find a company that would rather shut down [a franchise] than allow a union,” he said. “We now have a company that borrows heavily from McDonalds— Walmart.”
The lecture also touched upon an unsettling issue that loomed large over “Fast Food Nation”—the treatment of workers in slaughterhouses that provide meat for McDonalds and other fast food companies, most of whom are illegal immigrants.
“If [the book] was called ‘Injured and Maimed Poor Latinos,’ I’m not even sure my own relatives would read it,” Schlosser joked.
“[We must think of] the people who are cleaning the slaughterhouses,” he said. I think it is not only one of the most dangerous jobs, but the worst job in America.“
”These workers are illegal, illiterate, impoverished, and untrained,“ he said. ”[Their workplace] is like a vision of hell, literally. There is blood, carcasses and [chemicals in the air that] look like smoke. Injury rates are astronomical.“
Schlosser pointed out that government-issued injury rates for the meatpacking industry, miraculously decreased by fifty percent in 2003.
”The Bush Administration has completely changed the bookkeeping,“ he said, accounting for the apparent safety improvement. ”I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the meatpacking industry has given many millions in donations to this administration.“
Schlosser then switched gears to explain what this all means for America.
”I don’t think it’s any coincidence that during the same years we have been building prisons for the poor, we have been building gated communities for the very rich,“ he said. ”Low wages breed social dysfunction.“
In relation to the subject, he referred to Wesleyan as a ”wonderful bubble.“
”I’m not saying that you should feel guilty, you must know how lucky you are, but… the thing about bubbles is that they burst,“ he warned.
Many in the audience wanted to know if Schlosser thinks fast food is safe to consume.
”I don’t go to McDonalds or any other fast food chains not because I’m afraid of the food but because I don’t want to give them my money,“ he answered.
Schlosser went on to praise the business structure of California fast food chain In-N-Out Burger as a good example of what the industry should aspire to.
”In-N-Out Burger pays the highest wages in the industry,“ he said. ”They made a deliberate decision to have a smaller group of workers who are loyal and well-paid. It shows that the model McDonalds chose is not the only one possible. Long term, it’s in your interest to treat your workers well.“
Other listeners wanted to know what could be done to fix the societal problems related to fast food culture.
”There is no end to what you can do, but I think that knowledge is the first step to doing something,“ Schlosser said.
”The Annie Sonnenblick Lecture is traditionally given by someone who is a speaker of stature,“ said Anne Greene, Director of Writing Programs at Wesleyan. ”’Fast Food Nation’ is a shared text among students, that is, it is a book that more students have read. That could be seen at the lecture, as it was the largest attendance of the season [in the Distinguished Writers Series].“
”I’ve taken the message to heart and I’ll try to be more careful with how I spend my money and free time,“ said Tanya Lewallen ’08.
Emily Marshall ’08 said she saw indications for the American community at large.
”After Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’ there was such a movement to deal with these issues [in the meatpacking industry],“ Marshall said. ”Yet after ‘Fast Food Nation’ there is still nothing getting done. I think it is very indicative of our times.“
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