Fight for $15, a group backed by the Service Employees International Union, has filed 28 state and federal complaints against McDonald’s Corp. and its franchisees over the past two weeks, the group said Monday.
In a response, a McDonald’s spokeswoman said the company plans to review the allegations.
“McDonald’s and its independent franchisees are committed to providing safe working conditions for employees in the 14,000 McDonald’s Brand U.S. restaurants,” spokeswoman Heidi Barker Sa Shekhem said in an email statement. “We will review these allegations.
“It is important to note that these complaints are part of a larger strategy orchestrated by activists targeting our brand and designed to generate media coverage,” she added.
The group said it filed complaints against restaurants in 19 cities. Complaints were also filed with state safety and health authorities. Nation’s Restaurant News could not immediately confirm with the Department of Labor whether the complaints were filed.
The group, which has helped organize protests and other legal action against McDonald’s and other quick-service chains, assembled videos detailing workers’ procedures for emptying grease traps. It also showed graphic pictures of burns, and included a manager’s alleged suggestion that a worker soothe a severe burn with mustard.
Fight for $15 has started a petition to push the Department of Labor to investigate the quick-service industry.
One worker in the video complained that she was burned after being forced to rush during a busy period, slipped on a greasy floor and caught her balance on the grill — and then was told to put mustard on the wound.
“My managers kept pushing me to work faster, and while trying to meet their demands I slipped on a wet floor, catching my arm on a hot grill,” Brittney Berry, a worker at a McDonald’s restaurant in Chicago, said in a statement. “The managers told me to put mustard on it, but I ended up having to get rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.”
Berry goes on to push for union rights at McDonald’s, “so we have a voice to make the company take responsibility for the dangers it creates in its stores.”
Restaurants generally have high rates of workplace injuries, according to OSHA data, though fewer incidents than other professions, like truck drivers, nurses and police officers. There were a total of 1.2 million reported workplace injuries in 2014, including 17,000 among food preparation workers.
Fight for $15 argues that the figure is even higher than that. Citing a study conducted for the union-backed National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, the group claims that four out of five quick-service workers have been burned, and that three-fourths of burned workers suffered multiple burns.
The survey also claims that a third of quick-service workers say their restaurant’s first aid kit is missing, incomplete or inaccessible. In addition, a third say that workers are given mustard, butter or other condiments to treat wounds, and 46 percent of workers in the survey blame under-staffing and pressure from managers to work too fast as a reason for the burns.
Fight for $15 is waging a campaign against McDonald’s as part of a broader push for higher wages and to enable quick-service workers to unionize. In January, the activist group helped 10 employees file discrimination lawsuits against a Virginia franchisee, as well as the corporation.
Contact Jonathan Maze at [email protected].
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