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McDonald's gives new meaning to "we do it all for you" by investing in people and their neighborhoods.

Whenever we come across the name of McDonald’s in the media we anticipate vociferous reports about antiglobalists’ new attacks against Golden Arches. The main fast-food chain has become their main and “favourite” culprit.

The burger chided by environmentalists and revered by children, has become a cultural institution. But according to the zealots of global diversity behind the façade of convenience and “have a nice day” lie ruthless marketing instincts and elaborate organization. The famous corporation is often berated for sweatshop and child labor.

Global champ McDonald’s is spreading into developing markets, where its image as an icon of Americana makes it hugely popular. Its ubiquitous restaurants are associated with the proliferation of American culture and annihilation of indigenous cultures and traditions.

However any attempts of ostracizing the corporation were squelched by the recent events in South Central Los Angeles.

When the smoke cleared after mobs burned through hundreds of busi­nesses, many of them even black owned, had been de­stroyed. Yet not a single McDonald's restau­rant had been torched. Within hours after the curfew was lifted, all South Central's Golden Arches were back up and running, feeding fire fighters, police and National Guard troops as well as burned-out citizens. The St. Thomas Aquinas Elementary School, with 300 hungry students and no utilities, called for lunches and got them free—with delivery to boot.

For Edward H. Rensi, president and ceo of McDonald's U.S.A., the explanation of what happened, or didn't happen, in South Central L.A. was simple: "Our busi­nesses there are owned by African-Ameri­can entrepreneurs who hired African-American managers who hired African-American employees who served every­body in the community, whether they be Korean, African American or Caucasian."

The $19-billion-a-year company has often been the target of those who dispar­age everything from its entry-level wage structure to the aesthetic blight of its cookie-cutter proliferation. But the Los Angeles experience was exoneration of enlightened social policies begun more than three decades ago. The late Ray Kroc, a crusty but imaginative salesman who forged the chain in 1955, insisted that both franchise buyers and company ex­ecutives get involved in community af­fairs. His main tenet was "If you are going to take money out of a community, give something back. It's only good business."

As a result, McDonald's stands out not only as one of the more socially respon­sible companies in America but also as one of the nation's few truly effective social engineers. Both its franchise opera­tors, who own 83% of all McDonald's res­taurants, and company officials sit on boards of local and national minority ser­vice organizations, allowing the company to claim that its total involvement in ev­erything from the Urban League and the n.a.a.c.p. to the U.S.

The spawning ground for many of the new ideas and programs designed to integrate the franchises into neighbor­hoods in which they operate has been the company's moral and intellectual McCenter, Hamburger University. Since 1979 the company has held affirmative-action seminars for its executives and managers there, as well as in many of the company's 40 regional offices, on such topics as how to manage the changing work force and handle ca­reer development for women, blacks and Hispanics. Each year 3,000 employees complete affirmative action training pro­grams that last l'/2 to 3 days. Ideas origi­nated at headquarters and by individual franchisees have led to programs such as McJobs, which takes on mentally and physically impaired employees, and McPride, which keeps students in school and rewards them for academic achieve­ment while they work.

Today nearly 70% of McDonald's restau­rant management and 25% of the com­pany's executives are minorities and women, and so are about half its corporate department heads. This year McDonald's will nearly double its purchases from com­panies that are minority or female owned, from last year's $157 million to $300 mil­lion. Several of the biggest are owned and operated by former McDonald's managers or franchise holders.

Through a program devised by its store owners, the company has helped estab­lish 153 Ronald McDonald Houses, named for the chain's trademark clown, where families of seriously ill children can stay while the child is undergoing extensive medical treatment, such as chemotherapy or bone-marrow transplants. Each house serves an average of 15 families who pay from $5 to $ 15 a night, if they can afford it.

But McDonald’s broadest impact has been through its basic job-training system. Its 8,800 U.S. restaurants (there are an additional 3,600 overseas from Beijing to Belgrade) train American youth of every ethnic hue. "Send­ing a kid to the Army used to be the standard way to teach kids rudimentary skills and basic values, disci­pline, respect for authority, to be a mem­ber of a team, get to work on time, brush your teeth, comb your hair, clean your fingernails," says Ed Rensi. "Now, some­how, McDonald's has become the new entry-level job-training institution in America. We find ourselves doing things in that role that we would never imagine we would do." Among them: paying kids to study, rewarding them for staying in school, hiring physically and mentally handicapped youngsters and adults and giving sensitivity training to co-workers. In a program called McMasters, older people, usually retirees, are hired to work alongside young crew members to give the workplace a sense of family and to set an example of caring, courtesy and responsibility.

At Pat Newbury's McDonald's restau­rant in Renton, Wash., some young em­ployees earn an hour's pay not for flipping burgers but for studying an hour before their work shift begins. In a Chicago-area restaurant, Hispanic teenagers are being tutored in English. In Tulsa, a McDonald's crew is studying algebra after work. At a Honolulu restaurant, student workers get an extra hour's pay to study for an hour after closing. In Colorado, Virginia and Massachusetts there are Stay in School programs offering bonus money for em­ployees who receive good grades. Read­ing-improvement classes frequently take place at restaurants in Kansas and New Jersey.

Despite the initial skepticism of edu­cators, McDonald's programs have man­aged to allay the fears of many that work and school could not mix. In February the National Association of Secondary School Principals passed a resolution commend­ing the company for "exemplary and moti­vational efforts to support education, stu­dents and assistant principals.

"In conjunction with the vocational-rehabilitation services of several states, nearly 7,000 disabled and handicapped people have been trained to function as full McDonald's employees by job coaches drawn from within the company. Before these less fortunate employees take their places, company trainers often put young able-bodied workers in blindfolds, gloves or dark glasses to demonstrate the liability their new colleagues have to deal with in doing the same jobs.

Owner Jonah Kaufman has 26 handicapped people, mainly with Down syndrome, on the payroll in his 12 Long Island stores. Kaufman says the key to his success with the disabled is "to try not to treat them differently." McDonald's has used Braille and its own kind of sign language as aids for impaired employees. At McDonald's Oak Brook headquarters, staff workers are sought from specialized schools, such as Gallaudet University and the Rochester Institute for Technology, which has an educational center for the deaf.

Senior vice president Robert H. Bea­vers Jr., who gave up plans to become an electrical engineer 19 years ago to stay with McDonald's, says the company's so­cially minded business practices have made the company stronger: "Our energy level and our understanding of the market today are much better because of the cultural diversity we have." He points out that in the inner city, where he grew up, they say, "If you talk the talk, you better walk the walk."

In Los Angeles, they talked and they walked—and they didn't burn. So Rensi and his team intend to keep on keeping on. After all, it's only good business.