Triangle Fast-Food Workers Go on Digital Strike to Protest Unsafe Conditions

Nearly 100 restaurant and retail workers in Durham and Raleigh held a one-day “digital strike” Friday to call the public’s attention to what they describe as unsafe working conditions, lost hours, and pay cuts as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic.

Unable to protest in the streets, the striking workers stayed at home and instead gathered via a Zoom call. The workers went on strike after Durham and Wake County governments issued stay-at-home orders for residents unless they need to be out for essential services, but before Governor Cooper issued a statewide stay-at-home order.

“Front-line workers like us are getting hit the hardest right now,” said Rita Blalock, a Raleigh McDonald’s employee. “McDonald’s is calling itself an essential business, but isn’t providing us with the essential protections we need to be safe at work.” 

Blalock said she was given a pair of gloves to use while working at the drive-thru window, where she sees customers wearing gloves and masks.

“It’s just really unsafe,” she said.

Cierra Brown, a fast-food and hospital food service worker, said she contracted a “viral respiratory illness,” and her doctor ordered her to stay home for a couple of days.

“I don’t have health insurance or paid sick days,” Brown said. “I don’t have any of that. This is kind of new to me, and it’s scary. I want to let everyone else know that I feel your pain.”

Fast-food restaurants have been exempted from state and local business closures, as have other take-out and delivery restaurants. But the striking workers say the companies have failed to protect them during the public health crisis and discards them the instant they are not needed. 

The strikers are all members of NC Raise Up, a chapter of the national Fight for $15 and a Union movement.

Employees of Family Dollar, Food Lion, Walmart, and Shell gas station joined fast-food workers during Friday’s noontime strike, sharing work experiences “on the front lines of a spreading public health crisis,” as NC Raise Up’s press release described it.

Some workers told how they had to mix their own homemade sanitizer because their fast-food restaurant doesn’t provide adequate cleaning supplies. Waffle House employees said their hours had been cut and several stores had been shut down. Fast-food workers at one area restaurant said concerned customers brought them masks to wear, but their manager told them they couldn’t wear the masks because they might alarm other customers. 

The workers garnered support from city council member Jillian Johnson as well as the N.C. Justice Center, Carolina Jews for Justice, and Triangle physician Jess Friedman, who said the strike was needed to protect workers and the public and described McDonald’s treatment of its employees “inhumane before the COVID-19 pandemic. In this pandemic, disregard for worker safety compounds baseline inequities to put individual workers, their families, and the public they serve at unacceptably high risk.”

Johnson said front-line workers are the people who run the community. 

“Y’all’s jobs are the most important jobs in the community,” she said. “Of course you deserve basic safety protections. Of course you deserve paid sick leave.” 

Johnson added that the pandemic “is the best argument for universal health care. We need paid sick days—folks need to make bills whether they can come to work or not. Every single one of you is an essential worker, and you deserve to be treated as such.”

Food Lion and Walmart are both hiring to keep up with customers’ demands for food and other products needed during the Triangle-wide shutdown.