McDonald’s workers’ horror story: 25-hour shifts and bunking in their boss’s basement!

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Salon.com

Inside the harrowing nightmare of striking McDonald's guest workers, whose "cultural exchange" proved a nightmare

Josh Eidelson

A former McDonald’s franchisee will pay out a six-figure settlement after allegedly subjecting student guest workers to 25-hour shifts, substandard housing and repeated retaliatory threats. The settlement, announced Tuesday by the federal Department of Labor, includes $205,977 in damages and back pay to 291 workers, the majority of whom landed at McDonald’s under the State Department’s J-1 visa program for “cultural exchange.” Fifteen of those workers drew international attention and support after mounting a surprise strike last March.

“The conditions at this McDonald’s were not the exception, but rather an extreme version of the rule,” charged National Guestworker Alliance director Saket Soni, whose group spearheaded the strike. Local DOL director Al Gristina alleged in a statement that franchisee Andy Cheung’s company Cheung Enterprises “willfully took advantage of vulnerable student workers living and working in our country under the J-1 visa program.” Andy Cheung and McDonald’s did not respond to requests for comment.

As I’ve reported, the McDonald’s workers first walked off the job March 6. “We are afraid,” guest worker Jorge Victor Rios told me before going on strike. “But we are trying to overcome our fear.” Rios and his comrades at central Pennsylvania McDonald’s locations accused Cheung of rampant and ongoing abuse: Schedules of as little as a handful of hours a week (despite paying $3,000 on the promise of full-time work), or as many as 25 hours straight, without any overtime pay. Cramped housing including bunkbeds in their boss’ basement, for which they paid him rent that could rival a meager week’s pay. And threats ranging from curtailed hours to deportation, for offenses ranging from reporting abuse to refusing a last-minute order to come to work.

“Nothing that they told me is true, because everything is a lie,” striker Luis Fernando Suarez told me last year. Suarez said his so-called cultural exchange had been “like an ugly face of the United States … I didn’t feel safe.”

FULL story at link.





Read more: http://www.salon.com/2014/02/20/mcdonalds_workers_horror_story_25_hour_shifts_and_zero_dollar_pay/

---

[Blue_Tires]

1. There was some other store or food chain pulling this shit a few years back...

The name escapes me at the moment...

[jsr]

3. Foreign Students in Work Visa Program Stage Walkout at Plant

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/us/18immig.html

August 17, 2011
Foreign Students in Work Visa Program Stage Walkout at Plant
By JULIA PRESTON

PALMYRA, Pa. — Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hershey’s chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor.

The students, from countries including China, Nigeria, Romania and Ukraine, came to the United States through a long-established State Department summer visa program that allows them to work for two months and then travel. They said they were expecting to practice their English, make some money and learn what life is like in the United States.

In a way, they did. About 400 foreign students were put to work lifting heavy boxes and packing Reese’s candies, Kit-Kats and Almond Joys on a fast-moving production line, many of them on a night shift. After paycheck deductions for fees associated with the program and for their rent, students said at a rally in front of the huge packing plant that many of them were not earning nearly enough to recover what they had spent in their home countries to obtain their visas.

Their experience of American society has been very different from what they expected.

[Blue_Tires]

4. Ah, thanks...Same state too, no less...

[Sunlei]

9. twice this summer, a group of more than 150 Jamaican guest workers who clean in Florida, walked off.

Much more at their website. Guest workers have organized and they want to start a Union.

http://www.guestworkeralliance.org/

[AtheistCrusader]

2. I guess you can get away with slavery these days, for a fine.

A fucking settlement.

Someone should be in JAIL over this.

[Ikonoklast]

10. Corporations are people, my friend.

Unless and until they get caught breaking the law, then you can only fine them, you aren't allowed to revoke their business charter for say, twenty years to life.


Every corporate officer should be held personally responsible for the crimes committed by the corporation they run.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

11. Yeah,...it's not like you can kill them...

[mrmpa]

5. A few years back.........

I went camping out West. At Yellowstone at the cafeteria I saw a number of young men & women working. They had their name tag on which also listed the country they were from.

I spoke to one young man from Bulgaria. He was in the US on this program & was looking forward to seeing more of the US, though he could not believe the beauty of Yellowstone.

This is what the program is about meeting Americans via work & leisure.

[Turbineguy]

7. I also a very nice experience

at Yellowstone talking with a Hungarian student a number of years ago. We need to stay on the good side of these programs.

[happyslug]

6. This was just outside Harrisburg

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/03/hampden_township_j-1_student_p.html

You have to understand what is meant by "Central Pennsylvania". In a nutshell, you start with Philadelphia, then the Bedroom Communities of Philadelphia, then into "Central Pennsylvania" roughly Lancaster to Harrisburg. As you go over Blue Mountain, you enter the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania, then

The Center of Pennsylvania is NOT in what is called "Central Pennsylvania" but in the middle of the section generally called the Mountains. Western Pennsylvania either starts in Altoona or after you cross Allegheny Mountain and hit Johnstown.

http://www.personal.psu.edu/uxg3/blogs/coal/blog/



**********************Allegheny-------Mountains-------Blue-----Central----Bedroom-Philly
WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA****Mountain.............................Mountain....Pennsylvania
***************JOHNSTOWN**Altoona............................at
..................................................................................Harrisburg

Just to show that while Western Pennsylvania takes up the Western 1/3 of the state, the true Center are the Mountains, but that area taht calls itself "Central Pennsylvania" tends to be in the Eastern 1/3 of the State.

Blue Mountain is the border between Fulton and Franklin Counties, Juniata and Perry Counties, and Northhampton and Dauphin Counties.

[SharonAnn]

13. It's been said that Pennsylvania "is Alabama in the middle"

I think saying is that Pennsylvania has Philadelphia on the East, Pittsburgh on the West and Alabama in the middle.

[happyslug]

15. Actually, the Middle of Pennsylvania goes about 1/3 Democratic in most elections

In Western Pennsylvania, The counties around Allegheny (County Seat Pittsburgh) are known Democratic Strongholds. At the same time prefer home boys to anyone from the Eastern Half of the State (Corbett did his best to show he was from Western Pennsylvania is the ads he ran in the west). Do to the coal strike of 1928 and the efforts used by Coal Operators to defeat that strike (Mostly importing African Americans from the South as scabs, without telling the African Americans about the strike, thus you had a and have a lot of hatred of African Americans in the coal regions of Western Pennsylvania. Thus Kerry could win those Areas in 2004, but Obama lost them. Also why Hillary Clinton beat out Obama in Pennsylvania during the primaries of 2008).

I once talked to a good Republican about my county, Cambria, main city, Johnstown. He told me he rarely goes north of US 22 (Which divides Cambria County in half) fo the area north of US 22 is solid rural Democratic, either former coal miners or Steel Workers from Johnstown.

Just pointing out, that statement has less truth in it then people who make it think. Remember when they did count the votes in Florida after the 2000 election (done by the papers and ruled NOT official). Gore won Florida do to votes he picked up in RURAL areas. In the Urban Areas he picked up almost no votes, for those were counted accurately. It was the rural counties that Gore found the votes to win had the Supreme Court permitted a re count. The people in the boon docks who voted for Gore were the people who would put him over.

Yes, on a may Central Pennsylvania looks strongly GOP, but when you look at actual votes, the GOP is NOT that strong in Central Pennsylvania. The areas where you get overwhelming GOP votes are the suburbs of Philadelphia. 80 to 90% of Philly votes Democratic, but Lancaster County and much of "Central Pennsylvania" is almost the same GOP. In recent years as the GOP turned to the Right, suburban Philly has turned Democratic. In Western PA, do to the long term effect of the 1928 coal strike (Such deep fights tend to affect how people vote for the next 100-150 years) it ended up voting GOP in Presidential elections (Thus Senator Casey received overwhelming support from the counties around Pittsburgh, while Romney was winning them on the Presidential level). You see this division again in the 2008 Democratic Primary, Western Pennsylvania preferred a Woman to be President then an African American (And were called being racists for that reason, while no one was calling the African American Community anti-Woman for they preferred an African American to a Woman President).

Elections in Pennsylvania are more complex then a lot of people like to think and thus the old State of Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in the middle is inaccurate.

[Sunlei]

8. These 'guest workers' had to pay $3K,to get MDs job. This is why Rs don't want to raise the minimum!

There are thousands of visa 'guest workers' imported to the USA, who have to pay the 'contractor' thousands of dollars for the job. The law requires they are paid minimum wage, but the contractor can deduct for 'costs.' Plus the employer gets workers who are easy to threaten if they complain. This happens also with Americas 'for profit' prisoners who also 'work' for as little as 50 cents an hour. Today.

This not only exploits foreign visa workers, Americans can't find 'basic work' as it is these days.

I think any business that hires foreign visa workers should get no tax breaks state/local or federal at all.

[marmar]

12. AKA indentured servitude

[mackerel]

14. There are probably so many we don't even know about.

[jpak]

16. Right out of Jack DeCoster's playbook

yup