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Next week sees the third anniversary of McDonald’s global boss Steve Easterbrook getting a super-size 368% pay rise.

Last year, his salary only went up a measly 94%. Easterbrook received almost £11million in pay – or around £5,500 an hour.

Outside the blacked-out windows of his London offices this week stood two of his young workers, lucky to earn £5,500 in six months of hard graft.

Kayleigh O’Neill, 18, does long nights cleaning a McDonald’s in a London retail park for just £6.76 an hour. Lauren McCourt, 23, also does gruelling overnights in a busy 24-hour Manchester store. As a ‘crew trainer’ she earns £7.25 an hour.

Proudly wearing McStrike T-shirts, the two women had come to hand in a letter to Paul Pomroy, boss of McDonald’s UK division.

They weren’t asking to use either of the company’s two private jets. They just wanted a living wage, safe working conditions and union recognition.

(Image: Getty Images Europe)

“Our branch regularly posts its latest ‘record-breaking’ takings on our ­Facebook page,” Lauren says.

“But apparently McDonald’s can’t pay us the real living wage.”

McDonald’s says Mr Pomroy is “in the process of responding”.

Last July, President Donald Trump ’s favourite restaurant unveiled its new dining concept ‘Experience of the Future’, but Kayleigh and Lauren are struggling to build a future at all at McDonald’s.

Kayleigh is trying to study for a qualification in health and social care, but says the night shifts are shattering.

“I just work, sleep, work, sleep,” she says. She is employed as a ‘customer care assistant’ but spends all night cleaning the closed store. Lauren, an accounting graduate, also says she is too exhausted to do anything but work.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with Kayleigh and Lauren outside McDonald’s HQ were TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady and Ronnie Draper, the leader of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU).

In September young workers from the BFAWU in Cambridge and ­Crayford, South East London, led the very first strike in McDonald’s history over low pay and zero-hour contracts.

This week was Heart Unions week, and for O’Grady the two women represent a reminder of old struggles from history.

(Image: Getty Images)

“These young women’s demands are the same as the dockers nearly 130 years ago,” she says. “They want a fair wage, guaranteed hours and recognition of their trade union.”

Draper says UK workers are preparing to McStrike again. “McDonald’s is the world’s second biggest private employer and the biggest serial exploiter of workers’ rights in the world,” he says.

“These aren’t people being exploited by some backstreet sweatshop, it’s a global brand. Steve Easterbrook is earning £5,500 an hour but can’t afford to give his workers a basic pay rise?”

Zero-hour workers like Lauren and Kayleigh also struggle with rent, loans, mortgages, phone contracts, benefits and childcare. Kayleigh is paid even less because she’s on a ‘youth rate’.

“Yet, of course, your food and clothing don’t cost less,” O’Grady said.

Two thirds of McDonald’s restaurants are now run as franchises, and franchisees, dubbed ‘McMillionaires’ because of the vast profits, typically own five restaurants.

McDonald’s says all of its staff in company-owned and franchise restaurants have been offered a choice of what they call ‘flexible’ or fixed-term contracts.

“All of our people have been offered this choice and around 80% of our people have selected to stay on flexible contracts,” a spokeswoman said.

But Lauren says at her Manchester outlet few staff know about the offer.

(Image: DAILY MIRROR)

“Apparently we are all being given the ‘right to request’ fixed hours but they’ve not told us how to apply for it,” she says.

“Even if we applied, there’s still only a certain number of fixed- term contracts.

"You can’t apply for 30 hours if you’ve averaged less, so you could end up worse than now. There is no right of appeal.”

Both young women also worry about safety at their branches. Lauren says women working at her 24-hour store are regularly bothered by men offering to “wait for you after your shift”.

McDonald’s says it doesn’t comment on individual employees but takes the “safety and wellbeing of our people extremely seriously”.

O’Grady points out the parallels with the Presidents Club scandal, where companies are no longer liable for ‘third party’ sexual harassment.

“The Tories removed this protection in 2013 to mean employers were no longer liable,” she says. “We need the law changed back.”

Steve Easterbrook once launched an unsuccessful campaign to have the term McJob – defined as an ­“unstimulating low-paid job” – removed from the Oxford English Dictionary.

Now he has the power to change the word’s definition – by giving his own McEmployees fair pay and decent working conditions.