Employees of McDonald's are "deeply concerned" with the franchise's handling of winter wave of the pandemic
Author: Joel Griffiths | Saturday 20th March 2021
McDonald’s are facing internal claims of Covid rules and regulations being broken, by members of staff in Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Kent. McDonald’s say they will expand their investigation into this rule-breaking after claims that sales competitions between restaurants are endangering staff health and safety.
Sky News reports that employees across England have been in touch, with "serious concerns" about how the chain has dealt with the winter wave of the pandemic.
Workers have claimed that competitions, where restaurants try to beat each other on foodservice targets, have resumed to the jeopardy of the chain’s own Covid-19 rules.
McDonald’s UK had paused sales competitions in light of the pandemic to enable restaurants to prioritise safety. This policy is still officially in place, but some franchisees have reportedly reintroduced them.
McDonald’s promised staff that social distancing would be in place and that staff would be able to wash their hands every 30 minutes.
Staff in Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Kent have reportedly been made to feel ‘powerless’ when raising concerns with local managers.
A worker from the Sheffield area has detailed some of his experiences on behalf of his colleagues nation-wide.
"No manager is checking to see that temperature checks are being done anymore and very little effort is going into making sure there is another member of staff to check people's temperatures on entry.
"Handwashing is not being kept on top of most days and even then not all day. It will inevitably be forgotten about once it becomes 'inconvenient'.
"We are still consistently being pushed to work fast over safe, our store has been regularly breaking pre-Covid hourly sales records.
A spokesperson for McDonald's UK said: "We are deeply concerned to hear this feedback, and while we are confident this relates to a very small number of the 130,000 people we employ across the UK and Ireland, we strongly believe that every one of our employees should feel safe within the workplace.”
