The fact that McDonalds let them work 70 to 100 hours a week (With one victim who worked a 30-hour shift) shows that they are happy to exploit people. This is a crime in its own right, ignoring the fact that their wages were stolen
I can’t speak for the bread factory. But most McDonald’s are franchise locations and are run by people who don’t work directly for the company using their own hr and payroll. While McD corp are not wholly absolved by that fact, the franchisee and their back office staff (which in my experience are often their own family and friends) will have almost certainly been aware of what was going on but been happy to have the slaves working there anyway.
That’s the whole point of the franchise system. The franchisees can basically only make money if they horrifically exploit people and the corporation can deny responsibility. This is not some aberration, this is how the system works.
Yep, the franchise is supposedly an independent business, except they can’t choose suppliers, can’t change the menu, can’t change prices, can’t do their own marketing, etc. The only variable they have any control over is basically personnel, so that’s where they try to save as much money as possible.
Yeah sorry I meant that this McDonalds let them do this. I’m not an expert on labour laws in the UK but surely a 30 hour shift should be illegal, if it’s not already
Labour laws are often exploited in the UK around working hours, if you look at the care sector and the hours people regularly put in you’d be horrified.
It’s funny because the article claims that the companies failed to spot it. We have no evidence that they failed to spot it. We only have evidence that they failed to take action. So then we left asking the question, if someone did spot it, what would they have done?
It’s simply unbelievable that nobody spotted it, so then we’re left wondering whether they reported the situation to their supervisors, and why nobody took any action. Bribery seems like a likely possibility. Of course I have no solid evidence. But neither did the author of the article.
It’s impossible to get someone to understand what their salary depends on not understanding
