Carl’s Jr. workers at a North Hollywood location walked off the job Tuesday to protest allegedly unsafe working conditions.
About 30 members of the California Fast Food Workers Union, along with the two striking Carl’s Jr. workers, gathered outside of the restaurant on Vineland Avenue. Workers said the company has failed to provide protection from violent customers and doesn’t provide proper access to paid sick leave.
Workers detailed violent interactions with customers, including robberies and physical assaults, and said the company refused to provide safety training. Workers also aren’t given time to recover from injuries they suffer on the job, they said.
Yolanda Cruz, a striking employee who has worked at Carl’s Jr. for 20 years, is scared every time she clocks in for work, she said. Employees are regularly harassed by customers, the 66-year-old said.
“What else can we do? Just pray to God that how we get to work is the same way we return home at the end of the day,” Cruz said to The Times in Spanish. “This is the fear we have all the time.”
One morning, when Cruz arrived at the store for an opening shift, a man jumped at her as she tried to enter the restaurant. Angry customers also regularly throw drinks at employees, according to a complaint filed by workers to Cal/OSHA and the California Labor Commissioner’s Office.
Last summer, the complaint said, a man ran into the restaurant’s kitchen, threw items at employees and threatened them with a frying pan. The man then punched a worker in the face, according to the complaint.
A doctor ordered the worker to take a week off, but the employee said that, on the fifth day, she was called in to work because no one could cover her shift, the complaint said. Fearing retaliation from her employer, the worker clocked in to work with a black eye, her face still swollen from the attack, according to the complaint.
“Management tells us that when a customer is aggressive we should just give them what they want, but we have not been trained on what to do if we are being attacked or if someone is having a mental health crisis and is behaving erratically,” the worker said in the complaint.
Workers have urged city lawmakers to pass the Fast Food Fair Work Ordinance, which would establish paid, full-day training on workers’ rights and expand paid leave for fast food workers.
The union headed to City Hall on Tuesday afternoon to give public comment in support of the ordinance during the City Council’s Economic Development and Jobs Committee meeting.
Workers also requested unarmed security guards and a safer store design, including barriers and locked doors, according to the Cal/OSHA complaint.
These changes are crucial to protect the city’s nearly 50,000 fast food workers from violence, wage theft and the denial of basic labor protections, advocates said in a news release announcing the strike.
Protect Los Angeles Residents, a coalition backed by fast food restaurants, claims the ordinance would be too costly and jeopardize the city’s restaurant owners. Fast food companies, including McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Starbucks, have spent tens of millions of dollars to suppress legislation efforts.
Carl’s Jr. got its start as a hot dog cart in Los Angeles in 1941. The first full-service restaurant was opened in Anaheim by founders Carl and Margaret Karcher a few years later.
The sprawling burger chain exploded in Southern California in the 1960s before expanding to more than 1,000 locations internationally.
Today, it struggles to maintain its hold on the West Coast. A major Carl’s Jr. operator that operates 65 locations across the Golden State — including the Vineland location — filed for bankruptcy in early April.
The operator, Friendly Franchisees Corp., cited the state’s fast food minimum wage increase to $20, along with the brand’s own struggles with marketing and innovation, as reasons for the bankruptcy in a recent court filing.
A company spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Times.
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