The fast food giant McDonald’s will create a unit to investigate cases of sexual or racist harassment and assault in its establishments in the United Kingdom, following complaints from a hundred employees published by the BBC.
McDonald’s general manager for the United Kingdom and Ireland, Alistair Macrow, explained that said unit could refer reported cases to specialized investigators.
“The accusations that we have heard this week are shocking, personally and professionally,” said Macrow, who reiterated “his deepest apologies” for the “clear failures” in the management and prevention of these attacks. “Any serious violation of our code of conduct will be dealt with severe measures, including dismissal,” he warned.
The BBC revealed on Tuesday that more than a hundred McDonald’s employees in the United Kingdom claimed to have been the victim of sexual or racist assault or harassment, in a new case that adds to a growing list of such scandals in the British business world.
The fast food giant had already been the target of accusations four years ago, when the BFAWU union denounced that more than 1,000 employees had been victims of sexual harassment and ill-treatment in their workplace.
The fast food chain has 177,000 UK employees, most of whom are very young, including teenagers.
Two years ago, a group of former and current McDonald’s employees in France denounced a “systemic” policy of sexist discrimination within the chain, with dozens of testimonies describing sexual harassment and a “harmful” business culture.
The former leader of the group worldwide Steve Easterbook was fired at the end of 2019 for having an intimate relationship with an employee, in breach of internal regulations.
McDonald’s established that the executive had concealed relationships with various staff members and that he had lied about the true nature of this relationship when it became public.
In recent months, accusations of sexual assault and rape within the main British employers’ CBI have surfaced in the British business world, of sexual assault against the former chairman of the board of directors of Tesco supermarkets, against investor Crispin Odey and even against a former journalist for the left-wing newspaper The Guardian.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
