As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sicken and kill front-line workers, corporate hypocrisy has public life-or-death stakes
Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images Walmart really cares about black lives. So does Amazon. And McDonald’s. Six years after Ferguson, the killing of George Floyd has shocked their consciences. They’ve said so repeatedly, in missives to staff and ads and a few policy changes here and there. Walmart and the Walmart Foundation “are committing $100 million over five years through a new center on racial equity,” CEO Doug McMillon announced in a letter to employees.
But Terrence Wise was not impressed. “It’s like someone looking me in the face and telling me a bold lie,” the McDonald’s worker said. “That’s the clearest way I can put it.” Wise, an activist with the Fight for $15 and a Union campaign, has spent the last seven years lobbying McDonald’s for better wages and benefits like sick leave. “I’ve marched to the doorstep of the McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago, year after year, demanding not only racial equality but $15 an hour and a union,” he added.
After months of mounting COVID cases — and years of activism — workers like Wise say it’s difficult to believe their employers truly care about black lives. In one Oakland McDonald’s, managers told cashiers and cooks to wear dog diapers if they couldn’t find masks on their own. Eleven workers eventually tested positive for the virus; one of them is pregnant. The virus then spread to their family members, and beyond them, to other McDonald’s workers.
“I left Amazon because my safety wasn’t taken seriously,” said Mario Crippen, who led a walkout at a warehouse in Romulus, Michigan, in early April. Amazon’s handling of the coronavirus was the last indignity that Crippen, an activist involved with the Athena coalition of advocacy groups, could tolerate. He told Intelligencer that he also got racially profiled at work. For a while, he was the only black process assistant in his facility’s pick department.
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