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Mcdonald's Civil Rights Case Study

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SUMMARY: Ten former McDonald’s workers filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging racial and sexual harassment. The company allegedly fired more than a dozen black workers who “didn’t fit the profile” and of which claim they were sexually harassed by supervisors at various McDonald’s branches. The workers allege that the company took no action, even though they had lodged their complaints. The National Labour Relations Board issued a complaint that contends McDonald’s is responsible for the racial and sexual discrimination.

WORKERS’ RIGHTS: The racial and sexual discrimination that took place at McDonald’s can be described as a violation of employees’ rights to a safe workplace free from discrimination, as outlined in Section 6 of the Employment …show more content…
This scandal is a breach of the consumer right to safe and good quality products, as outlined in the Consumer Protection Act, and it should be noted that the regular consequences of such actions is that the Consumer Protection Tribunal will impose a suitable fine. The first consequence would be the bad publicity that McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut would receive and as a result, this would discourage most customers, for fear of also getting expired meat. Their brand would be weak and customers would associate it with mainly negative connotations. Secondly, this would in turn lead to a decrease in sales and thus profits and this would place a financial burden on McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut- long term consequences include that they would struggle to pay rent and workers’ wages and may face having to close down those particular branches. They would thus lose customer loyalties as well as destroy their relationships with various stakeholders.Thirdly, their various suppliers might not want to continue doing business with these branches due to the bad publicity that is associated with them and thus one would expect food shortages. Lastly, they’d be placed under intense scrutiny by the Consumer …show more content…
It is important to let the customers know that they had no knowledge of what was happening, as this would make the customers understand that the issue has been recognized and is being dealt with, which would lead to an increase in sales and thus profits. Cheung, Wat and Kao need to converse with the Purchasing Functional Department of KFC, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and come up with a strategy to identify unreliable suppliers. It is recommended that they employ a few additional workers to do regular check-ups and surveys on the relevant suppliers and this should be done on a monthly basis, in order to ensure that they are buying from a reliable supplier. Each time a check-up is performed, this should be, for example, posted on McDonald’s’, KFC’s and Pizza Hut’s websites to keep the customers updated and aware of the extra health and safety measures that they are taking. This would, in turn, foster greater customer

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