Former Employee Files Sexual Harassment Class Action Lawsuit Against McDonald’s

November 12, 2019 Admin 0 Comments

The plaintiff’s case is one of several Times Up Legal Defense Fund-backed legal actions against McDonald’s

On Tuesday, McDonald’s was hit with a sexual harassment class action lawsuit, the latest in a string of legal action workers have lobbed against the company in their quest to force it to address what they say is a “systemic problem” of abuse in its stores.

The named plaintiff in the new suit, Jenna Ries, says she endured multiple instances of sexual harassment over the year and a half that she worked at a McDonald’s outside of Lansing, Michigan. Soon after she began working at the restaurant, she claims, a manager began harassing her and calling her names “like bitch, slut, and whore in front of other workers and the general manager,” she said on a call with the press on Tuesday. The harassment was also physical, as he “took every opportunity to grab me in the crotch, breast, and butt,” she said, and would also pull her hair and push her into other coworkers. In one instance, she says, he forcibly put his genitals in her hand. In another, he cornered her in a walk-in freezer, pinning her against the wall. “I was so scared,” she recalled.

She was able to escape the freezer, but the harassment took a mental toll on her. “It was so hard for me to go to work, but I felt I needed the money and had no choice,” she said. “I constantly lived in fear of losing my job for rejecting his advances.” Although Ries says she reported what she experienced to her general manager, and he even witnessed many of the instances himself, “nothing ever happened.” She frequently left the restaurant in tears, and she brought the impact home with her as it affected her relationship with her boyfriend and her family. Even though she no longer works at the restaurant, “I am still dealing with the emotional damage,” she said.

The class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of all women who worked at the same restaurant over the past three years. The complaint alleges that Ries is not the only one targeted by her abuser, but that he harassed other people so frequently he was called an “HR nightmare.” While Ries is currently the only named plaintiff, her lawyers have spoken to other women at the same location who have said they’ve had similar experiences and expect more class members to join the lawsuit.

Also on Tuesday, an unnamed former McDonald’s employee in Detroit filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming that after a male coworker propositioned her and she reported the incident, she was transferred and her hours were cut so drastically that she was forced to quit.

The new allegations are meant to force McDonald’s to respond to what workers say is a companywide problem of sexual harassment. “This Michigan restaurant is emblematic of the systemic and serious problem of sexual harassment at McDonald’s restaurants across the nation,” said Eve Cervantez, an attorney with firm Altshuler Berzon, who is representing many McDonald’s workers. “This class action complaint alleges that the work culture at McDonald’s is toxic… It is McDonald’s institutional failure to address sexual harassment that allows it to flourish.” The lawsuit asks for systemic relief and a court order demanding better policies and procedures at the company, as well as compensatory damages of at least $5 million for those who experienced “extreme emotional distress and economic deprivation” due to harassment, Cervantez said. “We hope that this class action lawsuit sends a message to McDonald’s that it cannot ignore its workers and cannot ignore its duty under the law to protect its workers.”

It’s the latest in the legal battle McDonald’s employees are currently waging against the fast food giant over what they claim is a culture of sexual harassment and management failing to act. Ten employees across eight different cities filed charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in May of 2018, claiming they had experienced lewd comments and being propositioned, groped, and even assaulted at work, but that management either ignored their complaints or retaliated against them. A year later, workers filed another 25 EEOC complaints and lawsuits. The “vast majority” of those cases are still pending before the EEOC, Cervantez said, and the hope is that the agency will “look at this as an institutional problem that needs an overall solution.” There are also unresolved claims from 15 charges that workers filed against the company in 2016.

Workers claim they have gotten no response from the company and have demanded that executives sit down with them to hear their stories and work together toward solutions. “Over the past three years, McDonald’s has largely ignored its frontline workers who have filed more than 50 complaints alleging a trail of illegal conduct in both corporate and franchise McDonald’s restaurants,” a statement to the press said. “Many cooks and cashiers who spoke up about harassment have felt the brunt of retaliation, from reduced hours and unwarranted discipline to being fired or forced to leave their jobs.”

In response to a request for comment on the new charges, the company said in an emailed statement, “There is a deeply important conversation around safe and respectful workplaces in communities throughout the U.S. and around the world, and McDonald’s is demonstrating its continued commitment to this issue through the implementation of Safe and Respectful Workplace Training in 100% of our corporate-owned restaurants. We are encouraged by the partnership and commitment from the National Franchisee Leadership Association and the Women Operators Network that represent franchisees across the U.S. to work with franchisees to implement this important Safe and Respectful workplace training program.”

A spokesperson also noted that beyond the new training, announced in August and rolled out last month, the company has revised its discrimination, harassment and retaliation prevention policies with the help of the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network; implemented an intake hotline for employee complaints; and committed to annual policy and training reviews.

“Those measures sound promising, but they’re nowhere near enough,” said Gillian Thomas, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents some of the workers. “They were crafted by lawyers at a high-priced law firm without any input from survivors of abuse.” None of her clients, she said, have heard anything about the hotline. She also argued that the new training is “the definition of window dressing” and pointed out that it’s only mandated at corporate-owned stores and merely encouraged at franchises.

The latest legal challenges come with the backing of both the ACLU and the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, begun in the wake of #MeToo as a way to funnel money from celebrities to help people of lesser means who have experienced sexual harassment fund their cases.

In the face of what they say is company inaction and failure to respond to their allegations, workers have also gone a step further than filing legal claims: In September of last year, they staged the first-ever nationwide strike against sexual harassment, walking off the job simultaneously in ten cities across the country. Their demands included the company forming a committee made up of both employees and executives to address the issue, holding mandatory sexual harassment trainings, strengthening and enforcing the existing zero-tolerance policy, and creating a better system for handling complaints. “We’re not going to stay quiet anymore,” employee Adriana Alvarez told The Cut at the time. “We need to have a path forward so that no one experiences sexual harassment on the job — not just in fast food, but everybody.”

They have since staged other strikes, joined on the picket lines by Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro and former candidates Bill de Blasio and Jay Inslee. Other candidates, including Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren have also expressed their support for striking McDonald’s workers. On Tuesday, hundreds of workers in Flint and Detroit, Michigan walked out in the fourth strike against the company over sexual harassment. They walked off the job in order to demonstrate “our collective voice to stand up for ourselves and make sure we’re protected from harassment on the job,” said Jamelia Fairley, a McDonald’s worker in Sanford, Florida and a leader in the Fight for 15 movement. Fairley, too, says she was sexually harassed on the job by a coworker who made explicit comments and then touched and rubbed her butt and groin. After reporting what happened to her, she says, her hours were cut, sometimes to as few as seven a week. “We’re strong, and together we will have a voice.”

Workers have argued that the company fosters a climate of harassment by failing to take meaningful action to prevent and address it. As proof, many have pointed to the company firing CEO Steve Easterbrook earlier this month after it was uncovered that he had engaged in a consensual relationship with an employee, against company policy, which the company said showed he had “demonstrated poor judgment.” Yet he will receive a severance package that could be worth $70 million. “The message is clear,” Thomas said. “There are different rules for people at the top than for the folks who are actually earning the profits for the company every day.”

McDonald’s is not the only culprit when it comes to rampant sexual harassment. In a 2016 survey of women in non-managerial fast food positions, 40 percent said they had experienced unwanted sexual behavior at work. Two percent reported having been sexually assaulted or raped. The food service industry writ large made up the largest share of EEOC private-sector sexual harassment charges between 2005 and 2015.

But workers and their advocates believe that targeting McDonald’s could have a ripple effect in the industry. If they can prompt McDonald’s to change, Thomas said, then they can “truly move the needle in combatting harassment in one of the worst sectors of the American workplace.”

“This is not just about me. This is about countless workers at McDonald’s around the country who have survived sexual harassment on the job,” Ries said. “By bringing this lawsuit, I hope other McDonald’s coworkers who are experiencing sexual harassment at work feel empowered to come forward.”

“Together, we have a voice,” she added.