McDonald's UK CEO Alistair Macrow's said hundreds of new allegations of abuse by workers at the fast food giant are "abhorrent and unacceptable".
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McDonald's UK has fired more than 29 people in the past year over sexual harassment allegations, according to its chief executive, who described fresh complaints published on Tuesday as "abhorrent".
More than 100 McDonald's workers were alleged to have experienced harassment, racism, bullying and assault, according to a BBC investigation published last July.
The fast food giant vowed to clean up its act and improve staff behaviour, and its UK boss Alistair Macrow told British lawmakers during a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday that a series of internal investigations and disciplinary hearings had led to 29 dismissals.
The company, which employs more than 120,000 people in the UK, had been alerted to 75 allegations of sexual harassment over the last 12 months, 47 of which had been upheld with disciplinary action taken, according to Macrow.
However, the BBC reported on Tuesday that McDonald's staff were still facing sexual abuse and harassment more than a year later, and said that the UK's equality watchdog was planning to intervene again after receiving 300 reported incidents of harassment.
One 19-year-old worker told the BBC that some of his colleagues were scared to go into work as managers would "touch up" staff members. Other claims include a worker who quit her job at the end of 2023, after complaining about being inappropriately touched by managers and sexually harassed by customers only to be told by bosses to "suck it up".
In a separate development on Tuesday, UK legal firm Leigh Day said it had been instructed to start legal action against McDonald's by 700 staff and former staff — mainly younger people — with more than 450 restaurants implicated in the claims.
At Macrow's appearance before politicians on the UK's business and trade committee on Tuesday, its chairman asked him if McDonald's had become a "predator's paradise".
While Macrow condemned the revelations made by the BBC — calling them "abhorrent and unacceptable" — he asserted that they are "not widespread".
The company's UK chief executive was also asked about whether its heavy reliance on zero-hour contracts contributed to a power imbalance in the workplace, which made sexual harassment possible.
In his response, Macrow ruled this out, stating that employees chose to work under zero-hour contracts and saying that this had nothing to do with sexual harassment.
This is not the first time that the fast-food giant has come under fire for a toxic workplace culture. In 2021, McDonald's workers from restaurants in 12 cities in the US went on strike to condemn the handling of sexual harassment claims.