CHICAGO _ A lawsuit brought by 17 workers at Chicago-area McDonald's restaurants alleges the fast-food giant has failed to protect them from violent incidents they say take place daily at work.
The suit, filed Thursday in state court in Cook County, accuses Chicago-based McDonald's of negligence for making decisions that compromise worker safety, including requiring employees to work overnight hours and recent store redesigns that have reduced barriers between employees and customers.
The workers describe numerous incidents of customers attacking or groping them at stores throughout Chicago. At one store on the South Side, a customer jumped over the counter, took off her clothes and threw kitchen equipment at employees, the lawsuit says. At another on the North Side, a customer yelled at an employee who was mopping outside of a bathroom and hit her with a "wet floor" sign.
Josefina Garduno, who works at McDonald's inside of Union Station downtown, said that as she prepared to start her 5 a.m. shift two weeks ago, a man pointed a gun at her and threatened to kill her. Eventually he was arrested, the suit said, but Garduno was disheartened by her employer's response.
"None of our supervisors asked us if we were OK," Garduno said in Spanish, through a translator, during a conference call with reporters Thursday. "Not only did I feel scared, I felt angry at the fact that people at the company I work for don't do anything to protect us. They don't take our safety seriously."
McDonald's as well as about a dozen franchisees are named as defendants. The suit does not claim McDonald's is a joint employer with its franchisees, who operate more than 90% of the chain's restaurants, but alleges the parent company is liable for negligence because it mandated the store redesigns and controls training and other policies, said lead attorney Danny Rosenthal, a partner at the law firm James and Hoffman in Washington, DC.
"Despite controlling the training offered to workers at McDonald's restaurants, McDonald's has failed to provide even basic training that would help workers minimize conflict or respond appropriately when it occurs," Rosenthal said in a conference call with reporters.
McDonalds in October rolled out a new training program for restaurant supervisors and crew that includes instructions for mitigating workplace violence, such as how to diffuse a difficult situation with customers. Rosenthal said the plaintiffs had not yet received the training at their stores.
"McDonald's takes seriously its responsibility to provide and foster a safe working environment for our employees, and along with our franchisees, continue to make investments in training programs that uphold safe environments for customers and crew members," the company said in a statement. "In addition to training, McDonald's maintains stringent policies against violence in our restaurants."
McDonald's is in the midst of a major redesign, called Experience of the Future, meant to modernize its restaurants. The suit seeks to halt the implementation of certain designs it says make workers more vulnerable, including lower counters and split counters that allow people to walk between the customer area and the kitchen, and to modify restaurants that already have undergone the conversions.
The suit also seeks new drive-through windows so customers can't climb through and other policy changes, such as not requiring stores to place ads in windows that obscure visibility or stay open late without adequate safety procedures.
It seeks damages of at least $50,000 for each plaintiff.
