In newly filed complaints, McDonald’s employees described repeated sexual harassment and then punishment for speaking out.
In 2016, when she was 16, Brittany Hoyos started her first job, at a busy McDonald’s in Tucson. Not long after, she said, a manager began harassing her, touching her hair, texting her about her appearance and once making a move to kiss her after offering her a ride home.
Ms. Hoyos rebuffed him, and her parents alerted her supervisors. She was then subjected to retaliation at work, she said, including a demotion from her position as crew trainer. She said the retaliation extended to her mother, who also worked in the restaurant; eventually both were left unemployed. Ms. Hoyos blamed herself.
With 1.9 million workers in more than 100 countries, McDonald’s is one of the world’s largest companies and most recognizable brands. Now the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, formed last year to extend the muscle of the #MeToo movement beyond Hollywood, has taken aim at sexual harassment on the fast food chain’s assembly lines.
On Tuesday the fund, the American Civil Liberties Union and the labor group Fight for $15 are announcing the filing of 23 new complaints against McDonald’s — 20 sent to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; three filed as civil rights lawsuits; and two suits stemming from previous allegations.
In the filings, workers including Ms. Hoyos and her mother accuse McDonald’s of gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment in the workplace and retaliation for speaking up. It is the third and largest round of E.E.O.C. complaints that workers have filed against McDonald’s in the last three years.
The cases represent just a sampling of complaints labor advocates said they have received about the chain, but the company’s dominant role in the economy makes the campaign a major test of the legal and labor power of the #MeToo movement. The $25 million legal defense fund, housed at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, has received almost 5,000 requests for assistance since it was created in the fallout of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. A majority of those appeals came from low-wage workers, and the fund has given the most money to the McDonald’s cases, said Sharyn Tejani, director of the fund.
“What we’re seeing over and over again in these claims — for these workers, they’re put in a position where you have to put up with the harassment, or you lose the paycheck that’s keeping you in a house or keeping groceries on your table,” Ms. Tejani said.
McDonald’s is a strategic target. The restaurant industry has one of the highest rates of workplace sexual harassment; in one survey, 40 percent of female fast food workers said they had experienced it, and more than one in five said they had faced consequences — including shortened hours and being denied raises — for reporting it. Workplace sexual harassment is also difficult to litigate, partly because the statute of limitations is often very short, though employees are entitled to protections from hostile environments and from being targeted for speaking out.
Chains like McDonald’s, which has more than 14,000 locations in North America, the majority of them independently owned, have long argued that they are not liable for the behavior of employees at franchisees’ stores. (A case that may decide whether McDonald’s is a joint employer of its franchisee staff is currently before the National Labor Relations Board.)
“This is a company that has especially used the franchise model as a shield,” said Gillian Thomas, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “It’s determining literally the pattern that the sauce makes on the hamburger — it has a special machine that does that. And then throws up its hands and says, we can’t be responsible for how people operating those machines behave.”
Steve Easterbrook, the McDonald’s CEO, responding on Monday to a letter from Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, said the company had improved and clarified its policies on harassment; printed them on posters sent to all of its restaurants; and put most franchise owners through new training. In the coming months, he said, the company will be rolling out training for front-line employees, and a complaint hotline.
The changes began late last year, a McDonald’s spokeswoman added in an email on Monday. “By strengthening our overall policy, creating interactive training, a third-party-managed anonymous hotline and importantly, listening to employees across the system, McDonald’s is sending a clear message that we are committed to creating and sustaining a culture of trust where employees feel safe, valued and respected,” she said.
Employees maintain that, despite McDonald’s assurances, not much has changed. At least one corporate store had repeat federal claims made against it, and this year, two had multiple complaints.
Last September, hundreds of McDonald’s workers walked off the jobduring the lunch rush, protesting what they said was pervasive sexual harassment in the company’s restaurants. In social media posts this year, the ACLU invited more employees to report their experiences. Another protest, with some of those who filed new E.E.O.C. claims present, is planned for Tuesday, in front of McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago, two days before the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
The E.E.O.C. has the authority to investigate complaints, which can be a lengthy process. If it finds merit to a report, it can encourage the parties to resolve the charge informally, with the agency’s help; as a last resort, the E.E.O.C. can file a lawsuit. In 2012, for example, it secured a $1 million settlement from a McDonald’s franchise owner in Wisconsin that it had sued over sexual harassment.