Many Americans remember the old McDonald’s commercial that had us all hungry for “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun.”  When you felt compelled to purchase one of those concoctions, did you feel as though you had just bought a product similar to the factory-produced computer that sits on your desktop?  Or the desk it sits upon?  The Bush Administration seems to think you should. 

The President sent his new Economic Report to Congress last month, and buried among the 417 pages was the Administration’s query about reclassifying fast food workers as manufacturing positions.   The New York Times reports the White House drew a box for emphasis around the section that laments the current system of classifying jobs “is not straightforward.” The report went on to ask, “When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a ‘service’ or is it combining inputs to ‘manufacture’ a product?” According to the Administration’s logic, fast food production is the equivalent of producing an automobile or manufacturing a computer. 

It seems, however, that there is a more logical explanation as to why this Administration would like to add burgeoning fast food industry jobs into the dwindling manufacturing column.  It is a good old-fashioned shell game. 

This President has been under fire from news commentators and presidential aspirants for the growing number of manufacturing job losses we are experiencing in this country.  And exit polling of those voting in recent primaries indicated that jobs were their top priority, and rightly so. 

The day after the President gave his annual State of the Union Address, his wished for “bump” was usurped by headlines similar to the one which appeared in a South Carolina newspaper that decried three straight years of job losses in the State.  According to the accompanying article this is the first time South Carolina has experienced such a fate since the Great Depression, better known to those of us who came of age in the 40’s and 50’s as “Hoover Days.” South Carolina has lost 15,000 manufacturing jobs in the last year alone.  Our textile industry has dwindled to around 60,000, less than half its force a decade ago.  The headlines are equally bleak across the country. 

Combining that all-beef patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun may require a form of production, but it doesn’t constitute a product.  Would Mr. Bush differentiate between the fast food employees who make the sandwiches and those who ring up the orders?  How about between the ones who cook the French or “freedom” fries and the ones who “bust” the tables?  That sandwich may be as popular as a BMW but it is not assembled in a factory and shipped to outlets, creating jobs for truck drivers, railroad employees and air and sea workers.  For most Americans, a trip to a fast food establishment is an abbreviated visit to a full-service restaurant.  What can we expect to see next, the job of making a Singapore Sling reclassified to one of manufacturing?

Just as that jingle sticks in the American consciousness, the mass exodus of job losses is having a similar impression on this nation’s people.  I have high regards and great respect for those who work in fast food restaurants, but instead of looking for ways to cook the books to create the illusion that the valuable services they render are a form of manufacturing jobs, this President ought to spend more time and energy creating more meaningful jobs and protecting those that already exist.