The BBC’s investigation in July 2023 heard from workers, some as young as 17, who said they had been groped and harassed almost routinely.<\/p>\n
After the report, McDonald’s apologised and set up a new unit to deal with complaints.<\/p>\n
Schulz, who replaced Alistair Macrow as chief executive of McDonald’s UK and Ireland in September, said on Wednesday “a ton of work” had taken place to improve things since then.<\/p>\n
“What happened in recent years is unacceptable,” she said. “A safe and respectful workplace is a non-negotiable in our restaurants.”<\/p>\n
“We have zero tolerance for this behaviour and we have strong accountability measures in place.”<\/p>\n
But when asked what had gone wrong before, and whether there had been a cultural problem at the firm, Schultz responded: “I can’t speak to what went on before.”<\/p>\n
“I am here today to push us forward into the future and develop a culture.”<\/p>\n
She also didn’t respond to questions about McDonald’s franchise model, which some have pointed to as part of the problem, saying: “I don’t want to speak about the past. What I’m here [for] is to build the future.”<\/p>\n
Ian Hodson, president of the Bakers, Food, and Allied Workers Union, said: “You don’t fix a toxic workplace by staying silent.”<\/p>\n
“If they’re serious, they should finally start listening to workers and their representatives,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The BBC’s investigation in July 2023 heard from workers, some as young as 17, who said they had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-544666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}