My name is Karlana Kulseth, and I am an educator from our nation’s fifth largest school district in Las Vegas, Nevada. On behalf of Harrington Investments, I move shareholder Proposal 6 on McDonald’s charitable contributions.
As an educator, I welcome funds that flow into my school through outside entities. As a former Assistant Manager for your company, I find it appalling that the practice of McTeacher’s Nights is still being utilized in the name of charity, where employees’ shift hours are taken away to be replaced by teachers and students.
As a former assistant manager, one of the most heartbreaking duties I had was to take away shift hours from my employees to accommodate McTeacher Night fundraisers. The tears, the screaming, the obscenities, and even the food thrown at me, came as outbursts from employees who depended on their hours to survive, to support their families. In a world where the Fight for $15 an hour is a reality across our nation to ensure all workers are earning a living wage and dignity on the job, the fact that this practice still exists is archaic at best.
As an educator, it is disgusting that schools only get 10-20% of the profits running McTeacher Nights with the teachers and students being utilized as free labor. This in itself does not lend to McDonald’s being the generous company it attempts to wear as a badge of honor in support of education. Instead, combine the sparse earnings from these events with the free labor of teachers and students doing the work of runners, servers and lobby cleaners, we now see a different side of McDonald’s that is often hidden.
I urge you to re-evaluate the practice of McTeacher Nights and other forms of fundraisers McDonald’s promotes and utilizes. If you truly do support education, I urge you to discontinue the use of earning high profits off of free labor through our community schools. I urge shareholders to vote in favor of this proposal.
Thank you.
