McDonald’s workers say #MeToo in unprecedented strike

Tuesday’s strike is months in the making. In May, the National Women’s Law Center, which administers the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, filed sexual harassment complaints against McDonald’s on behalf of 10 women with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). At the heart of the legal effort was the women’s claims that managers at the fast-food company and its franchisees failed to address sexually aggressive language and behaviors, and in some cases retaliated against women who reported it by firing them or reducing their hours.

Tanya Harrell is one of those women. After reporting harassment by a co-worker, Harrell says that she was ignored and teased by managers at the McDonald’s in Louisiana where she worked. In May, Harrell transferred to a different McDonald’s location, where she still works. Both locations are in Louisiana and owned by the same franchisee, called Jamjomar, Inc., owned by former NFL football player James Thrower.

Harrell says she is planning to participate in Tuesday’s strike. Over the phone, she describes the coalition’s aims.

“We want to hold McDonald’s accountable for these allegations,” she says. “It’s not fair to us women to feel neglected.”

As is often the case, after complaints were filed with the EEOC in May, more McDonald’s workers spoke up to share their experiences of harassment while working at the fast-food chain. The complaints gained momentum and culminated in plans to strike.

“People in the fast-food industry generally rely on their jobs just to keep their heads above water,” Heller tells me by phone. “If you’re making minimum wage, and the only thing between you and homelessness is this job at a fast-food place, it’s going to be very hard to stand up and risk that if you’re being harassed.”

Most fast-food workers don’t belong to unions, either, and can’t rely on collective bargaining to negotiate higher wages or better workplace protections.

Heller says that in this case, McDonald’s could deflect blame for harassment at most of its restaurants because technically, they’re owned by franchisees, who simply license its name and branding. According to its most recent form 10-Q, McDonald’s has 37,406 locations worldwide. 34,521 of the of them are franchised—that’s about 92%. I reached out to McDonald’s with a request for comment and had not received a reply before press time.

“McDonald’s can claim that they have nothing to do with harassment at most of its locations because it is legally not the employer,” Heller says. “If McDonald’s knows it can never get sued for sexual harassment, they’re less likely to take action to stop it. It takes away their incentive to take action to protect workers.”

“It doesn’t matter if [a store] is franchised or corporate,” she says. “Sexual harassment happens.”

Right now, the federal government is on Harrell’s side. But that might not be true for long. On September 13, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proposed a rule that would tighten the current “joint employer” standard, a criteria that determines whether a company like McDonald’s is legally responsible for employees of its franchisees. In 2015, the NLRB under President Obama ruled that it is, so long as it has any control over various terms of employment, such as worker scheduling and overtime. The NLRB seems poised to overturn to overturn that.

Economic protests are not without precedent, Heller notes. On February 16, 2017, shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, significant numbers of restaurants and retail businesses across the country shut down in support of the Day Without Immigrants. The large-scale protest was intended to underscore the contributions immigrants make to the American economy, in spite of a White House administration that has been hostile to them. While, the #MeToo McDonald’s strike isn’t a boycott, it is aimed at drawing attention to the fact that McDonald’s depends on women to operate.