McDonald’s is in danger of creating a wave of new additions to the dictionary to sit alongside the now infamous “McJob”; words such as McPedant, McKilljoy and McSense-of-humour-failure.

The term McJob has become shorthand for low aspirational jobs in every sector, but the fast food giant’s UK arm is fighting to distance its brand from the image of poorly paid burger flippers. Today McDonald’s will begin a campaign calling for the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Collins, the publisher, to change their definitions.

However, John Simpson, chief editor of the OED, told The Times he had no intention of changing the definition. He said that although the OED did sometimes alter definitions to reflect a change in meaning or usage, there was “no evidence for that” in the case of McJob.

McDonald’s, as well as launching a public petition, has persuaded Clive Betts, a Shef-field MP, to sponsor a Commons early day motion. It “regrets the use of derogatory phrases attached to McJobs” and calls for the value of the service sector to the economy to be properly recognised.

Sir Digby Jones, the Government’s skills envoy, is one of several leading business figures to sign an open letter decrying the dictionary definition of a McJob as “an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector”.

Other signatories include the heads of the British Retail Con-sortium, the British Chambers of Commerce, City & Guilds, Investors in People and the British Hospitality Association.

David Fairhurst, a McDonald’s senior vice-president and its “chief people officer”, said that although the company was “not perfect”, the negative definition of a McJob, first used in 1986, was “inaccurate and out of date” with reference to the service sector in general and McDonald’s in particular.

He said: “This is a decades-old definition and to suggest that it’s a no-progression job is simply wrong.”

Mr Fairhurst said that 80 per cent of unit managers and one in five McDonald’s franchisees had started as hourly paid workers. The average length of service of workers – or “crew members” – was 2.5 years, while the average tenure of managers was ten years.

He said about half the 13-strong UK executive team had previously worked in one of its restaurants. Helen Hum-phrey, a vice-president, had started as a crew member, while John Atherton, chief operations officer, had joined as a graduate trainee.

“This is not just us bleating on about a dictionary definition. There is a serious problem with the way service jobs are routinely referred to in a derogatory way,” Mr Fairhurst said.

The OED, which has carried the word McJob on its online dictionary since March 2001, said: “We monitor changes in the language and reflect these in our definitions, according to the evidence we find.”

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive