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'Between Life And Death': McDonald's Worker Says Pandemic Puts Safety In Focus

Bartolomé Perez of Los Angeles has cooked at McDonald's for 30 years. He helped stage a walkout at his restaurant in April after a coworker tested positive for COVID-19.
Courtesy of the Fight for $15 and a Union
Bartolomé Perez of Los Angeles has cooked at McDonald's for 30 years. He helped stage a walkout at his restaurant in April after a coworker tested positive for COVID-19.

Bartolomé Perez has made countless vats of fries and flipped more burgers than he cares to remember in his 30 years of working at a McDonald's in Los Angeles.

In that time, he's joined several strikes to demand higher wages and better benefits for workers. But the stakes felt very different during the coronavirus pandemic.

"We are between life and death," Perez says, speaking in Spanish. "You know that every time you go out, it could be your last ... it could be the most expensive hamburger you make in your life."

Perez helped stage a walkout at his restaurant in April after a coworker tested positive for COVID-19. It was part of a big wave of protests by low-wage workers in retail, food and delivery.

Protesting workers were demanding more access to protections against the virus, like masks and disinfectant. That's in addition to other demands they raised long before the pandemic, like higher pay, more predictable schedules, better health care and other benefits.

McDonald's has said the health and safety of its workers was of "utmost importance" and told NPR that Perez's location had been closed for a "thorough deep cleaning" and had "ample supply of gloves, masks and soap." It said the protests "do not represent the feedback we are hearing from the majority of employees across the country."

Perez says, "We have always been essential. It's just that the company strategizes a narrative about us workers, saying that all we do is flip burgers, that we are replaceable."

Editor's note: McDonald's is among NPR's financial supporters.

Read more stories in Faces Of The Coronavirus Recession.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Alina Selyukh is a business correspondent at NPR, where she follows the path of the retail and tech industries, tracking how America's biggest companies are influencing the way we spend our time, money, and energy.

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SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

Together, we can defend it. It’s time to protect what matters.

Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.

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