They’re fighting McRacism

"ALL OF a sudden, they let me go for no other reason than I 'didn't fit the profile' they wanted at the store," said Willie Betts, a cook who was abruptly fired from McDonald's in South Boston, Virginia. "I had no idea what they meant by the right profile--until I saw everyone else that they fired as well."

Betts is one of 10 workers--nine Black and one Latino--who worked at three Virginia McDonald's stores and filed a federal lawsuit against the company for violating their civil rights. The offenses included firing Black workers and replacing them with whites, in order to, as supervisors explained, "get the ghetto out of the store," because the restaurant was "too dark."

"I worked at McDonald's for almost five years," Betts said in a statement on January 22. "I was on time every day at 4 in the morning to open the store, and I never had a disciplinary write-up. They took away the only source of income I have to support my family."

Workers say that when Michael Simon and his company Soweva took over management of franchises in South Boston and Clarksville, Virginia, in 2013, they promoted supervisors who were not only racially abusive but also sexually harassed workers, including verbally abusing and inappropriately touching them.

Katrina Stanfield told reporters in a telephone call that one of her female supervisors would make rude comments about her hair and appearance. "My other supervisor would regularly harass female workers at the store and made inappropriate comments about their bodies to the men at the store," Stanfield said. "He would touch workers inappropriately and send workers pictures of himself naked."

Some 18 workers, most of them Black, were fired abruptly at the three stores in May 2014. At the time, Alkeisha Lea told the South Boston News & Record that she got the bad news directly from Simon. She said Simon, who is also Black, told her that "the way he wants his company, I'm not a good fit. I don't fit the profile. I asked him what the profile was, and he didn't say. He said you do a great job. But you're not a fit for the organization."

Destiny Betts, who quit after her coworkers were fired, recalled a staff meeting where an assistant supervisor said "she was going to get the ghetto and the rachetness out of the store."

Employees said they brought their concerns to Michael Simon at Soweva and took it to McDonald's itself, but were denied any help. "We asked McDonald's corporate to help us get our jobs back, but the company told us to take our concerns to the franchisee--the same franchisee that just fired us," Pamela Marable said in a statement on January 22. "McDonald's closely monitors everything we do, from the speed of the drive-through line to the way we smile and fold customers' bags. But when we try to tell the company that we're facing discrimination, they ignore us and say that it's not their problem."

Plaintiff Christina Chadwick said she was often referred to as the "dirty Mexican" or "hot Mexican." Chadwick quit McDonald's in July 2014 because she couldn't take the abuse any longer. According to the complaint, Soweva also contested unemployment benefits for all terminated employees. During one worker's unemployment hearing, Simon told the hearing officer he could go back "and maybe find something to fire him for."

WORKERS ARE filing the discrimination suit against McDonald's Corp., not the individual franchise, because, as the complaint argues, "In order to maximize its profit, McDonald's Corporate has control over nearly every aspect of its restaurants' operations. Though nominally independent, franchised McDonald's restaurants are predominantly controlled by McDonald's."

McDonald's has long tried to pass on responsibility for its anti-worker behavior down to the individual store managers--some 90 percent of its U.S. stores are franchise operations. But last year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed suit against the corporation for violating its workers' rights to organize and protest for better conditions on the job. The NLRB general counsel determined that McDonald's should be treated as a "joint employer" at its franchises, and McDonald's Corp. itself is ultimately responsible for low wages, bad working conditions and reprisals for workers who try to organize.

Now, McDonald's HQ may just have to face up to the racist treatment endured by workers.

The workers' lawsuit has the support of the Fight for 15 campaign as well as the NAACP.

McDonald's likes to promote its "long-standing history of embracing the diversity of employees," as it claimed in a recent statement, but what's being revealed is that the company turns the other way when its employees are being harassed and victimized on the job.

Demonstrations and walkouts by fast-food workers across the country over the last few years have put companies like McDonald's under the heat lamp, exposing substandard wages and working conditions, including wage theft, at many of their stores. The campaign brought together workers at the main fast-food chains like McDonald's and Burger King, alongside other low-wage workers, to call for a living wage of $15 an hour and a union.

It's no surprise that a company that forces its workers to survive on minimum wage also employs supervisors who harass and intimidate Black and Latino workers, creating an atmosphere that tries to divide workers and make them feel isolated and alone. But these workers are standing together to hold McDonald's responsible.

Although the workers who are part of this lawsuit said their stores weren't a part of the protest actions, they said a union could have made all the difference for them. "If we had the right to a union, we would have been able to demand that our supervisors stop harassing us because of our race or for being a woman, and wouldn't have been left to fend for ourselves after being fired," Stanfield told reporters.

Fight for 15 has launched a toll-free national hotline for McDonald's workers across the country to report incidents of harassment and abuse at the workplace. The number is 855-729-2869.

Willie Betts explained to the South Boston News & Record that supervisors had the attitude that the crew members and shift managers had few, if any, better options for employment, and "they figured we couldn't do anything about it. They probably figured we'd just shut up and do nothing.

"They picked the wrong bunch."