California fast-food workers say they face a ‘crisis of violence’ at their job. Here’s why
Kcharlee Hughes couldn’t get out of the way when a man running from an alleged gunman barged into the McDonald’s restaurant where she works last summer and tried to hide in the kitchen.
The man pushed her into an empty fryer just two feet away from hot grease, twisting her knees in the process, Hughes said in a Cal-OSHA complaint she filed after the incident.
Chaos continued in the South Natomas restaurant that August day, she remembered. The man ended up staying in the back of the restaurant for a few minutes. He yelled at customers as he left and recorded them on his cellphone.
“What happened is such a blur,” Hughes, 51, said in her Cal-OSHA complaint. “I realized I was bruised all the way down from my shoulder to my knee.”
That incident reflects persistent dangers to fast-food employees who work in easily accessible venues that often lack security, labor advocates argue in a new report released Tuesday.
The advocacy group Fight for $15 and a Union documented some 77,000 911 calls for alleged violent or threatening incidents 2017 and 2020 at major chain fast-food restaurants in nine big California cities. The group called the reports a “crisis of violence” with a significant number of threats, assaults and other activities at their job.
Sacramento restaurants generated more than 8,000 emergency calls, including 756 for threats and 720 for assaults. A store on 30th and K Street generated more than 1,000 calls, according to the analysis.
In Stockton, each location on average reported more than 400 incidents between 2017 and 2020 for violent or threatening behaviors.
The Fight for $15 and a Union released the report to begin lobbying the Legislature for a bill that would make California the first state to establish a council setting pay and workplace standards for the entire fast-food industry.
“We shouldn’t have to risk our lives for burgers and fries,” said Maria Pinzon, a McDonald’s worker in Oakland, in the group’s press release. “We’re always on edge, worried our next shift could be our last.”
Industry groups such as the California Restaurant Association have said the proposal unfairly targets the fast-food industry, saying national brands can use their scale and size to better help their workers and improve their working conditions.
McDonald’s director of global security Rob Holm,said in a statement that the report does not reflect the “rigorous safety and security procedure” restaurant teams maintain. Because McDonald’s is a familiar presence in so many communities, people refer to its locations even if calls have nothing to do with the stores’ operations, Holm said.
Holm also said managers and crew at McDonald’s corporate-owned restaurants undergo full training including a comprehensive workplace violence prevention program. The company provides the same resources to franchisees, and will soon implement standards for safe and respectful workplaces, Holm said.
Violence in fast-food restaurants
The report analyzed 911 calls from fast-food locations in Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose and Stockton. It also focused on four of the biggest burger joints: McDonald’s, Jack in the Box, Burger King and Carl’s Jr.
The 643 stores analyzed represent only a fraction of some 29,000 fast-food establishments in the state, the group said in its report. Many incidents also go unreported, with some workers in the report saying they were pressed by their managers not to call 911.
The report paints a troubling snapshot, finding that more than one in eight calls involved assault. In San Francisco, nearly one-third of the calls involved assault, which include fights, shootings, kidnappings and physical attacks among others.
The report isn’t the only one to find the prevalence of violence at fast-food restaurants. A McDonald’s in San Francisco closed in 2018 after police were called to the site some 1,100 times between 2012 and 2015 and the site was declared a public nuisance.
A 2019 report from the National Employment Law Project found that at least 721 incidents of workplace violence at McDonald’s were documented in the media across the country between 2016 and 2019.
Its report found that violent incidents were more likely to happen late at night, which has become a bigger issue as more fast-food restaurants expand their hours, with some opening 24 hours.
Yet, workers aren’t trained in protecting themselves. Basic safety procedures around cash handling aren’t followed, and protective measures such as accessible panic buttons aren’t equipped at many of the stores, according to the National Employment Law Project.
Workers share their stories
Several workers interviewed for the report said they have not gotten much help from their managers when it comes to dealing with threats and assaults at the job.
Leticia Reyes, a worker at a Jack in the Box in Sacramento’s North Highlands, said she has seen so many incidents, including a person with a metal pike outside threatening to hurt people and a person who died in front of the store.
“I feel terrible. Very afraid. Scared, especially when I have to work in evenings,” Reyes said in Spanish through a translator. She works night shift from 2 to 10 p.m. “I have to be by myself and there’s no one to protect me… No one else seems to care.”
Despite multiple armed robberies in 2020 at Pinzon’s Oakland store causing her to have panic attacks, she has not received any treatment nor was informed of benefits or programs she could access, she said in the report.
Olivia Garcia, a McDonald’s worker in San Jose, said she was verbally harassed by a man for not giving him his food for free. The man began banging and kicking on the locked door, she said.
“He was saying things like, ‘Are you afraid? Come outside – see what happens to you,’” she said. “I took what he was saying as a threat on my life.”
She said she received no support from management after the incident.
This story was originally published December 7, 2021 at 1:06 PM.
