A version of this story first appeared on Berkeleyside’s sister site, The Oaklandside.
Fast food workers gathered in the parking lot of a McDonald’s on E. 12th Street in Fruitvale Tuesday to protest what they say are unfair wages and poor working conditions.
Employees from the restaurant nearly all of whom are Hispanic women along with workers from other fast food chains with locations in Oakland and the East Bay, utilized a flatbed truck as a makeshift platform to speak from, sharing their stories of working through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In this pandemic, we have seen just how far corporations have gone just to make a profit,” Maria Sabina, a McDonald’s employee, said in Spanish to the crowd. Sabina contracted COVID-19 more than once over the past year. She believes she got sick because her employer wouldn’t allow her and other staff time off. “This was terrifying for me because I live in a studio with my daughter and son that is part of another house,” she