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McDonald’s employees demanding hazard pay and more coronavirus safeguards demonstrated for a fourth day in the Bay Area on Thursday, taking their protest for the first time to Hayward.
At least six cars pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant on Watkins Street just after 9:30 a.m. and began honking in unison. The caravan of workers and organizers from the Fight for $15 labor group circled the fast food chain’s Hayward location for nearly 30 minutes. When the honking subsided, at least three workers from two McDonald’s restaurants in San Jose and one in San Leandro began chanting “McDonald’s escucha, estamos en la lucha,” or ”McDonald’s listen, we are in the fight.”
McDonald’s officials responded Thursday that its supply chain team has begun sending out PPE (personal protective equipment), as the company had announced it would do earlier this week. “In addition to social distancing decals, gloves and protective barriers, masks have started to arrive in franchisee and company owned restaurants with allocation going first to areas where the use of masks is required by law, to hot spots with a high level of confirmed cases in the community and then to the rest of the country,” said the statement, which did not detail locations.
Maria Ruiz, who has worked for McDonald’s for 16 years and participated in Monday’s protest, drove to Hayward from San Jose, saying that while the company is calling and her co-workers essential during the pandemic, it must recognize her life is essential too.
“We want gloves, we want sanitizer, we want protection between our customers and ourselves,” Ruiz said. “I do everything for McDonald’s. I give my life to McDonald’s day in and day out and I’m putting my life at risk to come to work. They need to pay $3 more per hour because I’m risking my life and they need to provide PPE.”
The protest was inspired by a series of strikes that began Sunday at a McDonald’s in Los Angeles where a worker tested positive for COVID-19. That spurred similar action at a McDonald’s in North San Jose.
“We are disappointed by today’s activities as they do not represent the feedback we are hearing from the majority of employees across the country where 99% of our drive-thrus are open to serve the health-care heroes on the front lines,” Lindsay Rainey, a McDonald’s USA spokesperson, said Thursday.
Although union organizers had said Thursday’s protest in Hayward would expand to include employees from several other fast-food restaurant chains, only McDonald’s workers participated in the labor action there before driving to another location for a follow-up protest in Castro Valley.
