SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Ask Vielka McCollum what she thinks about working at McDonald's, and she'll tell you that it's an archway of opportunity.
"McDonald's is my career; I love it," said McCollum, a Panamanian immigrant who rose from "crew" member earning minimum wage to her current job as manager of a McDonald's in Elk Grove, Calif., taking home about $50,000 in salary and bonuses.
She is the kind of dedicated employee McDonald's is trying to highlight in a new advertising campaign aimed at attaching a hip, contemporary image to an industry that has long been plagued by high turnover and low wages.
Featuring Olympic track medalist Carl Lewis and recording artist Macy Gray, the "My First" ads now airing nationwide highlight successful people whose first jobs were at McDonald's.
It's not for everyone. Some former employees, like Samantha Heredia, 18, of Sacramento complain of rude customers, teasing from friends and a harried, fast-paced workplace.
Heredia said that her summer job at a McDonald's restaurant was so dispiriting that she returned to high school determined to find other career options.
"It motivated me. When my teachers would be like, 'You didn't turn your work in,' I would be like, 'Oh my God, I don't want to have to work at McDonald's.'"
The television spots come at a time when McDonald's, a $20 billion company, is responding to health-conscious critics by upgrading its menu with salad and fruit items and is refreshing its overall image with an uplifting "I'm Lovin' It" marketing campaign.
The company's "My First" ads are unusual among fast-food chains, such as Wendy's and Jack in the Box, which tend to spotlight their food, not their people.
The "My First" ads - which feature a global cast of former McDonald's employees from such countries as Japan, Germany and Australia - are "about expanding awareness of the opportunities McDonald's offers with lifetime skills that serve people throughout their career, whether they are at McDonald's or somewhere else," said Lisa Howard, a company spokeswoman.
As manufacturing jobs disappeared in the 1970s and 1980s, McDonald's and other fast-food chains were criticized by labor groups and social critics for not offering enough well-paying job opportunities in the country's growing service sector. They have also criticized the fast-food industry for lobbying against increases in the minimum wage.
"Jobs like those at McDonald's don't help the economy and don't help working families save for retirement and put their kids through college," said Jill Cashen, a spokeswoman for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has tried to unionize fast-food workers.
Precise numbers on the size of the fast-food work force are hard to come by. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 1.5 million people work as food-preparation workers, a category that includes fast food. The best-selling book Fast Food Nation, published in 2001, estimates that 3.5 million people work in the U.S. fast-food industry, most of them under 20. The book, highly critical of the fast-food industry, said that there is a turnover rate of about 300 percent to 400 percent a year.
"Whether you're working at McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, there's really no sex appeal to that kind of job," said Joseph Anthony, the chief executive of Vital Marketing, a youth-marketing company in Manhattan.
The new ads, Anthony said, "can make kids feel better about working at McDonald's. It's something to share with their friend: 'Hey, so-and-so worked at McDonald's and look at him.'"
Anthropologist Katherine S. Newman spent several years following 200 workers at "Burger Barn" (her euphemism for an unnamed national fast-food chain) in Harlem, N.Y.
In her book, No Shame in My Game, she found that the employees took pride in holding a job, that managers encouraged them to study and that the work provided much-needed structure in their lives.
In a follow-up study - soon to be published - Newman interviewed the same workers eight years later and found that about a quarter of them had moved on to stable, often unionized jobs that pay solid wages. About half were working in slightly more skilled positions in retail or hospitals, but hadn't significantly increased their earnings. A quarter still struggled in entry-level jobs.
"The 'Burger Barn' jobs didn't pay well, and everyone knew it," said Newman, now a professor at Princeton University. "Yet it's very valuable experience. There's no question that being in the labor market is better than not being in the labor market."
It's a point emphasized by McDonald's officials, who said that the chain teaches skills such as responsibility, discipline and teamwork applicable to any career.
They point to people like McCollum, whose first job after immigrating here from Panama in 1996 was at a Sacramento-area McDonald's where she said she earned $4.25 an hour. Three years later, she was promoted to assistant manager with an $11-an-hour paycheck.
"I was alone in this country, so my focus was McDonald's. I was at McDonald's all the time," she said. "People say I have ketchup in my blood."
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