The fast food worker strikes of the past few years aren't just about higher pay, they're also about improving working conditions. This Monday, a group of McDonald's workers pressed that part of the fight by filing 28 workplace safety complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and various state agencies. The complaints target McDonald's stores in 19 cities, and in particular, they point to the regular burns workers suffer—which managers apparently believe should be treated with condiments. According to a press release:
“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,” said Brittney Berry, who has worked at McDonald’s in Chicago, Ill., since 2011, and who suffered a severe burn on her forearm and nerve damage from the accident. “The managers told me to put mustard on it, but I ended up having to get rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. This is exactly why workers at McDonald’s need union rights, so we have a voice to make the company take responsibility for the dangers it creates in its stores.” [...]
“One of my coworkers and I have to empty the grease trap without protective gear, and since we were never given the proper equipment or training, we just dump the hot grease into a plastic bag in a box of ice,” said Martisse Campbell, who works at McDonald’s in Philadelphia, Penn., whose hand was severely burned by boiling grease from a fryer. “Once, my coworker got badly burned, and our manager told him ‘put mayonnaise on it, you’ll be good.’ McDonald’s needs to be held accountable, and that’s why workers around the country are joining together.”
Mustard and mayonnaise. Would someone please spread the word among McDonald's managers that workers are not ham sandwiches?
These workers aren't alone in suffering or witnessing serious burns on the job: According to a survey conducted by Hart Research Associates on behalf of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, 87 percent of fast food workers have been injured on the job in the past year, and 79 percent have been burned on the job. Even among workers who don't work in the kitchen, the burn rate is 61 percent. The workers cite pressure to work too fast, understaffing, missing or damaged protective equipment, and broken or damaged kitchen equipment. More than a third of workers surveyed said their fast food restaurant didn't have a decent first aid kit, and more than 60 percent of workers in such restaurants said their burns were not appropriately treated, with condiments being a very common manager suggestion for treatment. (Hi there, mustard!)
It should go without saying, but apparently it doesn't: Badly burned workers shouldn't be part of the business model for fast food, just like workers forced to rely on food stamps shouldn't be part of the business model. Yet apparently that's how McDonald's operates. It's past time for that to end.
