For Perla Hernandez, 42, working through the pandemic at a Burger King outside San Jose has been a harrowing experience.
Eight of her fellow workers came down with COVID-19 during her two years on the job. She says that included a supervisor whose positive test was kept from her until she had been working with him for hours; another supervisor pleaded with her not to go home because the restaurant was so short-staffed.
The company provided her with a mask and protective gloves early in the pandemic but didn’t arrange to replace them, even though the gloves were in shreds before her shift was over.
In the back of the restaurant, where Hernandez works as a cook, there’s no air conditioning. When she was injured on the job and had to stay home for eight days with stitches in both legs, there was no sick pay.
“We need the job, so we have to do whatever the managers ask,” she told me through an interpreter.
Hernandez isn’t alone in feeling pressure to work through the pandemic, no matter the workload or the risks to workers’ and customers’ health.
“Just wear a mask and don’t tell anyone,” the manager of a Jack in the Box in Folsom told worker Maria Bernal after she appeared to come down with COVID-19, according to a Jan. 14 complaint Bernal filed with Sacramento County’s public health department.
The fast-food industry has long been a dark corner of the American workplace. Now, California is poised to bring that corner some light.
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