McDonald's

McDonald’s, identified in the account as the nation’s second-largest employer, became a focus of worker organizing over sexual harassment. Its significance lies in the distance between a company-wide promise to address the problem and the unresolved question of what would change on the ground for employees.

The Campaign Takes Shape

McDonald’s workers, including Kim Lawson, held a coast-to-coast walkout in September 2018 to protest what the book describes as the company’s weak sexual-harassment policies. Historians were calling it the country’s first strike related to sexual harassment in a century. The action made employees’ workplace concerns visible as a collective demand rather than a series of isolated complaints.

Lawson had first spoken with Jodi Kantor almost a year earlier. By the time of the walkout, she had become a leader in the campaign to press McDonald’s to address harassment on the job. She filed a complaint against the company with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency responsible for enforcing workers’ rights against discrimination.

Kim Lawson and Worker Organizing

Lawson’s activism was rooted in the conditions of her own life as well as the campaign’s wider aims. At the time of the group interview described in the book, she was earning $10 an hour at McDonald’s; six months earlier, she had been homeless. The account places her experience alongside those of women with markedly different resources and public standing, underscoring that speaking out and organizing carried particular stakes for a low-paid worker.

During the September strike, Lawson delivered a speech, gave interviews, and pushed her daughter along the march in a stroller. She described the action as loud and energizing, with new connections among workers and men who showed their support by marching behind the women. Her complaint and public advocacy also helped make her a source of support for other McDonald’s employees: she acted as a kind of team coach, counseling women involved in the union push through a text chain. Customers began recognizing her from television coverage of sexual harassment.

Policy Changes and Their Limits

McDonald’s was beginning to strengthen its policies in response to the pressure. The company introduced new training for managers and a hotline, and made plans for posters telling employees how to report harassment. These steps indicated an institutional response, but the evidence distinguishes plans and initial measures from changes workers could actually observe.

Lawson had not yet seen the announced changes materialize in her own store, and it remained uncertain how much the company’s thousands of workplaces would change. The book therefore leaves McDonald’s response open-ended: national attention and worker organizing had prompted action, but the practical reach of that action had not yet been established.