Workers at national restaurant chains are not covered by new sick leave bill

New protections from Washington don’t apply to workers from Chipotle and McDonald’s, and some say they’ve faced retaliation for taking sick leave.

Amid mounting concerns over the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus, food service workers across the country are urging their employers to offer paid sick leave with mixed results. Some national restaurant chains have implemented sick leave policies or strengthened existing ones, either proactively or under pressure from their employees. But even with such policies in place, workers say they still face hurdles to actually taking time off, including retaliation from their bosses. Some workers say that even with paid-time-off policies in place, they may not be able to access medical care. This is a problem when their employers expect them to provide doctor’s notes — even without insurance. Many won’t qualify for Covid-19 testing, thanks to the strict rules around who is being tested.

Nationally, just 25 percent of food service workers receive paid sick days, according to federal data. Judy Conti, the government affairs director of the National Employment Law Project, warned that industry-wide changes are needed to prevent the ongoing spread of Covid-19.

Early Saturday morning, the House passed an emergency coronavirus relief bill that guarantees sick leave to some workers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who negotiated the details with the White House, touted the rare bipartisan compromise meant to benefit all Americans. But the bill has some glaring exceptions. The paid-leave provisions apply only to employers with 500 or fewer employees. That means workers at McDonald’s, Subway, Chick-fil-A, and other national chains wouldn’t be covered by the bill at all — and according to data compiled by the New York Times editorial board, those same companies are among those that don’t provide paid leave.

Democrats previously pushed for a more expansive bill establishing a permanent paid-leave program that would apply to all public health emergencies, not just coronavirus, but House Republicans have pushed for these provisions to be limited to the current crisis. Conti said that sick leave shouldn’t just be an emergency measure.

“The way that we treat paid leave and paid sick leave policy in this country is coming into stark relief right now, but this is an ongoing crisis,” she said. “We spread the flu more than we need to — we spread everything more than we need to — because people come to work sick or people send their kids to school sick because people can’t afford to stay home and take care of them. I hope that whatever we do in this crisis doesn’t only enact a temporary fix but enacts some meaningful rights for workers in this country to stay home and take care of themselves when they are sick.”

In some cities, food servers have taken to the streets in protest of their employers’ sick leave policies. Chipotle workers in New York City walked off the job last week, calling on the fast-casual chain to comply with the city’s paid-sick-leave law. “Even if you call off, you will receive retaliation in some way,” Kendra Avila, a Chipotle employee in Manhattan, told the Goods. “At my store, it’s confusing on how to even get [sick leave]. To them, if you call out, you’re sabotaging their day and their chance of making money.”

In a statement to the Goods, a Chipotle spokesperson said the store’s policy is to “fully comply with [New York City’s] Sick and Safe Leave Act,” and added that the company is following its existing food-safety protocols — which include “wellness checks; paid sick leave; air treatment systems; Purell sanitizer for employees and guests; [and] personal hygiene requirements like handwashing every hour” to prevent the spread of the virus. “Employees that are not feeling well are required to stay home and we’ll welcome them back when they are symptom free,” the company said in a statement, adding that workers immediately accrue three paid sick days on their first day on the job. Despite these policies, the company settled a wrongful termination lawsuit with New York City just last month after an employee said she was illegally fired for using her sick leave.

Avila said the company’s policies are routinely ignored in its New York City locations. “If you are looking to call out, they’ll try to talk you out of it by saying it’s not a valid reason,” she said, adding that many workers feel the need to provide a doctor’s note if they call out for even one day. “To Chipotle, the only reason you should be calling out sick is because you’re vomiting, you have nausea, you have diarrhea, or if you have a fever. You can’t call out if it’s your child, your loved one, if you have a funeral, anything.”

Chipotle isn’t the only chain whose workers are calling for paid sick leave and other protections in the wake of the World Health Organization’s designation of the novel coronavirus as a pandemic. McDonald’s workers in Tampa, Orlando, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, went on strike Thursday, according to the group Fight for $15, which advocates for a higher minimum wage. Workers released a list of demands on Tuesday, including paid time off for workers who get sick or whose relatives are ill, quarantine pay for workers, and additional cleaning supplies and protective equipment for stores across the country.

A McDonald’s spokesperson said the company will offer paid time off for workers at corporate-owned restaurants who are asked to quarantine for 14 days but didn’t clarify whether workers who have COVID-19 symptoms and aren’t ordered to quarantine — including those who attempt to get tested for coronavirus and are turned away or those who can’t afford to seek medical care in the first place — also qualify.

More than 27.9 million Americans were uninsured in 2018, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, and most uninsured people are members of low-income families where at least one person works. Terrence Wise, a McDonald’s worker in Missouri who is organizing with Fight for $15, said many of his coworkers are uninsured. “Frontline McDonald’s workers are paid low wages and don’t get employer health care, so if we felt sick and wanted to go to the doctor to get tested, we would run into obstacles doing that,” he said. (Local and federal lawmakers are currently working to make testing affordable for all, but no federal policy ensuring access to testing has been enacted yet. Even if such a policy does go into effect, there are several anecdotal reports of people with symptoms being denied testing.)

The McDonald’s spokesperson told the Goods that all employees are expected to stay home when they are sick — but for those who can’t afford medical care, that could mean losing out on necessary wages.

“It’s all well and good to say you can take all the sick time you need, but if you are not going to be paying, you are realistically not going to give people sick leave,” said Conti “We have heard from workers that missing $60 or $70 a day in wages is the difference between being able to feed their family a month.” Conti added that McDonald’s coronavirus policy won’t apply to most workers. “Corporate-owned McDonald’s operations are somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of McDonald’s on a worldwide basis,” she said.

Conti described the company’s offer to give paid time off to workers who are ordered to quarantine is “purposely vague.”

“They don’t say who has to order the quarantine — if it’s a self-quarantine — or any details at all. It’s something that sounds good on the surface, but when you probe for the details, there’s an awful lot missing,” she said.

Other chains have implemented more expansive policies in response to the outbreak. Starbucks is giving up to 14 days of “catastrophe pay” for all workers who have been exposed to the virus regardless of whether they show symptoms, according to a letter sent to employees on March 11. “If you have not had any known contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19, but are showing symptoms, you should stay home until you are symptom-free for 24 hours,” the letter reads.

A former Starbucks employee, who worked as a shift supervisor until last week, said management didn’t always adhere to the company’s sick-leave policies. “In practice, through the several stores I worked at, I encountered a prevailing culture [that] discouraged taking sick time,” he said. “During my last few months, before coronavirus hit, there were numerous instances where employees would come into work visibly sick, afraid of calling out because they believed management and other staff wouldn’t support them.”

The company’s policies don’t cover all Starbucks workers, either. As CNBC points out, more than 6,300 Starbucks locations across the country are licensed to franchises that may have different policies than corporate-owned stores. The chain has also put more stringent health and safety measures in place, including banning the use of reusable cups.

Darden Restaurants, which owns several restaurant chains including Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse, also announced a new sick leave policy this week. The policy will give workers one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours they’ve worked, and tipped workers’ pay will be based on their 13-week average income, per CNBC. Workers won’t start with zero hours — instead, their starting sick leave balance will be based on their most recent 26 weeks of work. For example, if someone worked 20-hour weeks in that 26-week period, they’d have just over 16 hours of sick leave effective immediately.

Even as national restaurant chains implement new sick leave policies or expand existing ones, workers at local restaurants are worried they won’t receive similar protections. A worker at a local restaurant in Brooklyn, who requested anonymity to prevent retaliation, told the Goods he’s worried about their safety and that of their coworkers — and about the possibility of losing out on wages altogether.

“[Our employers] have offered zero guidance for working in a way that will hopefully prevent the spread [and] be more clean at work,” he said. “It’s a neighborhood spot that tends to be very busy, but it’s looking like this week is extremely slow. Bosses are already starting to cut shifts and told us to ‘start saving.’”

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