For the past couple of years, fast food chains in a number of countries (most notably the United States) have faced worker protests, as a worldwide outcry demands higher paying wages - now, months after New York announced they'd be implementing $15/hour salaries, McDonald's employees have achieved a new victory.
The fast food chain has recently been ordered to pay up to $355,000 to the U.S. government over discrimination towards legal immigrants, after it was found that, against the country's legislation, they were refusing to hire people with expired green cards even though those are also legal proof of their eligibility.
According to RT, the investigation on the status of immigrant McDonald's employees started after the U.S. Department of Justice received a complaint on its worker hotline about the fast food chain, saying that they were demanding unnecessary paperwork from legal immigrants in a discriminatory way.
"Employers cannot hold lawful permanent residents to a higher standard by placing additional documentary burdens upon them during the employment eligibility verification process," said Vanita Gupta, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and head of the Civil Rights Division, in a statement about the McDonald's employees case. "Requiring unnecessary documentation of individuals based on their citizenship or immigration status is discriminatory, and the Department of Justice will not hesitate to enforce the law and protect the rights of work-authorized immigrants."
As Reuters reports, the settlement on this McDonald's employees case will see the chain paying $355,000 in civil penalties, compensate legal immigrant workers who lost work hours (or even their jobs) because of this discriminatory practice and undergoing 20 months of monitoring from the DoJ, also including a new training program for its employees to avoid this kind of unpleasant discriminatory practices in the future.
The Justice Department also commended the fast food chain for being fully cooperating in the investigations on the McDonald's employees case and committing to pay its dues.
