The Workplace Powers That Employees Need
The pandemic exposed hazardous conditions, and workers should have a say in fixing them.
A few weeks ago, Angely Lambert was serving customers at a McDonald’s on a bustling commercial strip in Oakland, California, when she started to feel ill on the job. Her sharp headache and dull body aches bothered her enough that she asked if she could go home, she told me, but a manager insisted that she finish her shift.
With the coronavirus pandemic raging in the Bay Area, the restaurant had put up barriers between its cashiers and its customers and passed out protective gear. But sick workers at the Telegraph Avenue McDonald’s were never told to self-quarantine, a group of employees have asserted in a lawsuit and in interviews with journalists. According to these workers, the company did not inform them that they might have been
