PPP aid flooded fast food outlets facing labor complaints
Last October, as coronavirus cases began to slowly climb throughout Chicago, Kenia Campeano arrived at a brick McDonald’s on the Southwest side, where the 31-year-old had worked for nearly two years as a cook. Despite the pandemic, the store did a bustling business, and this particular day felt busier than usual, with customers gathered inside and a line of cars snaking through the drive-thru. As she hustled to assemble orders, the store manager arrived, saw the backup and asked why so few employees had shown up. “They called in sick,” a shift supervisor replied.
In the past, there had been rumors that workers had contracted COVID-19 at the Kedzie Avenue outlet, though Campeano had never been notified that she had been exposed. Still, it wasn’t hard to imagine how the virus could reach her. In the drive-thru area, she said, it wasn’t uncommon for four or five workers to crowd together, and even basic supplies could run out. “There were times when we didn’t have soap for two or three days, when we didn’t have hand sanitizer, when we ran out of gloves, too,” she said.
After clocking out that day, Campeano went home and began to feel feverish. She stayed home for several days as her fever spiked and she suffered body aches and shortness of breath. Soon, a COVID-19 test came back positive. Within days, the rest of her family tested positive as well: her husband and three children, including their 5-month-old baby, along with her brother, who lived with them. While recuperating at home for three weeks, she filed a complaint with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, alleging that the restaurant was endangering workers’ lives by failing to enforce social distancing or alert workers to possible exposure so they could quarantine, while also failing to provide masks and at times running out of soap.
In the complaint, filed with the help of the Service Employees International Union, Campeano wrote that she had learned that five co-workers currently had COVID-19 and that two floating workers – who moved from store to store and had worked at the Kedzie Avenue McDonald’s – had died from the disease. “Their families did not even have the money to pay for a burial,” she wrote.
Read more: https://revealnews.org/article/ppp-aid-flooded-fast-food-outlets-facing-labor-complaints/