McDonald's workers launch MeToo protests

McDonald's workers' #MeToo protests made sexual harassment a collective workplace issue, linking individual complaints to public demonstration and labor organizing. The September 2018 actions included workers across the United States, and Kim Lawson's account shows how protest could turn a complaint into a visible source of solidarity, influence, and public recognition.

Background and Stakes

The protests took shape against working conditions that could make harassment difficult to challenge. In the book's broader reporting, restaurant workplaces are described as places where alcohol was common and managers could be reluctant to confront customers who behaved inappropriately. That context helps explain why workers' accounts were not only about individual conduct: the ability to report and respond depended in part on workplace practices and the people empowered to enforce them.

For Lawson, a McDonald's worker, protest was connected to formal recourse as well as public action. She had filed a complaint against the company with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency responsible for protecting workers' rights against discrimination. Her participation placed that complaint alongside collective demands, rather than leaving it as an isolated workplace grievance.

The September Action

A few weeks before the book's later group interview, McDonald's workers staged #MeToo protests across the country. Lawson described the September strike as a loud, public march, marked by chanting, solidarity, and new connections with other people. Men also came out in support and deliberately marched behind the women, making their backing visible without displacing the women leading the action.

Lawson spoke at the march and gave interviews while pushing her daughter along in a stroller. Those details place her public advocacy within the ordinary demands of family life and low-wage work: she did not set those responsibilities aside to take part. The protest gave her a platform to speak about harassment in a setting where workers and supporters could hear her.

Lawson's Position and the Meaning of Collective Action

The book presents Lawson's circumstances alongside the economic inequalities among women who later gathered to discuss speaking out. At twenty-six, she was earning $10 an hour at McDonald's; six months earlier, she had been homeless. That contrast underscores how differently participants could experience the risks of public disclosure and the resources available to them. Lawson's action was not simply an act of visibility; it came from a worker facing immediate economic constraints.

At the gathering, Lawson described feeling empowered by filing her complaint and taking part in the strike. She had become a source of guidance to other female McDonald's employees involved in the union push, counseling them through a text chain. Customers began recognizing her from television coverage and asking whether she had appeared in reports about sexual harassment. The protest thus extended beyond the march itself: Lawson's public role carried into ongoing communication with coworkers and into her daily encounters with customers.

Consequences and Significance

The protests joined public testimony to workplace organizing. Lawson's experience shows a progression from filing a formal complaint to marching, speaking, and supporting other workers. The actions also made solidarity concrete: supporters followed the women in the march, while the women used their visibility to press an issue that could otherwise remain confined to private complaints.

The book's account does not detail a specific company policy change resulting from the demonstrations. It instead records their immediate human and organizing consequences: Lawson described a new sense of power, gained public recognition, and took on a peer-support role among workers. In that account, the #MeToo protest was both a public challenge to harassment and a means of building connections among employees seeking to act together.