I was 15 in 1984 when I first started working at McDonald’s Manukau city. For me it was exciting to have a job and get some independence. I initially saw this as just a part time after school opportunity to earn some extra money but it was to become much more than that.

We were all members of the Food and Service Workers union equivalent at the time. Membership was compulsory, some resented the fee’s coming out each week. But at the same time we never questioned the shoe and stocking allowance, laundry allowance, travel allowance for working after ten pm and best of all time the penal rates, time and a quarter on Saturday’s and time and a half on Sunday’s. All these had been achieved through the collective efforts as a union.

I can’t remember the exact rate of pay, but I think it was about $8 an hour, but when you added penal rates and the allowances I remember thinking how good the money was. I could easily pull in over $100 a week for 10-15 hours a week. For a 15 year old in 1984 I was rolling in it! My parents had not caught up with the concept of board yet! Isn't it amazing that almost 25 years later there is no difference now between what I would have earnt on a Sunday and what someone earns now?

It was a great job, the crew were great, the training was excellent, and some of the customer service things I learnt there are still with me today. At one point I even gained the illustrious honour of being employee of the month.

About 18 months into my employment, ( by now I was the new drive through manager and got an extra .50c an hour), there was some discussion about the fact that McDonald’s were looking at introducing youth rates. The idea being that we would be paid less than our current rate because we were younger.

We were outraged. Why would the same job we were doing suddenly be worth less because we were younger. We had to do the same job and meet the same standards as our older colleagues. What did our ages have to do with anything?

But McDonald’s persisted with their claims, and we as workers were not going to accept what they had put to us. We organised. With the help of our union organiser we decided that we had to take action. We met and agreed that if we were to stop this from happening we had to take a stand, we had to convince our older colleagues that this was just the start, if they were successful in bringing in penal rates, then that would undermine them as well. We had to think about what we would tell our customers and what we wanted them to do. We had to where involve the Otara store as they were the one we had the most to do with. We had to be prepared to follow through. We agreed that we would take strike action and cease work.

So the day came and most of us stood in the picket line, we explained to customers what we were doing and asked for their support by not eating at McDonald’s while we were on the picket line. Some listened, others didn’t. We spoke to drivers in the drive through queue and asked the same of the them. Once they understood some abandoned their orders. When that happened we would all cheer!

The management team were trying to keep things going but it became to much and eventually they eventually had to close for the day.

I remember this huge sense of pride, that we, essentially a bunch of school kids, together through our union, had the strength to close the store in the fight for our rights. It was for me a defining moment.

I wasn’t involved in the actual discussions with management at the time, that was the job of our Organiser, but after two days we were successful and McDonald’s withdrew the claim for youth rates and we went back to work.

But for those of us involved we understood why it was important to belong to a union, and be active in it, we understood that the rights we enjoyed had been fought for by others before us, and that we needed to also be prepared to take a stand. Most importantly we knew that acting together we had much more power than we could have ever had acting alone.

To this day I still ask McDonald’s staff if they belong to a union, most are not.

While the specific issues may be different the core principals remain the same.

Organise, organise and organise.

Sean Rahui