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Pizza Hut staff face health risks due to extreme heat at work
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PATTERSON, La. (KLFY) -- Workers at the local Pizza Hut and community members have raised concerns for employees allegedly working without air conditioning for a long period. One worker posted on social media about the temperatures.
“The heat in the kitchen it’s like blazing hot. I mean, like, it's just unexplainable hot in it,” said Shakirra Ferguson who’s been working there for a few months. “When you work in a fast food restaurant, you have to be at a steady pace back and forth, running, doing this, doing that, making this, making that, and then when the heat comes in, it just makes it worse. You sweat a lot and then you get it all over the place. So you have to stop, clean yourself back up, get back to work, and you just keep ripping and running in a fast food restaurant mainly every day.”
Charles McKinley, who is the president of concerned community crusaders and a frequent customer at Pizza Hut shared how he went to the place one day and it was extremely hot.
He said when he asked about the temperature he was informed it was over 100 degrees.
“I could see them just being dehydrated, sweaty; wiping and I knew that's not up to par as far as getting ready to serve food. You have to constantly be on guard and sweat pulling off of you,” he said.
McKinley said he went there another time to check on the workers and he was told several workers had to leave because they were vomiting from heat exhaustion.
“I know they are scared because of job purposes but just be bold in what you need to do, you can't work if you're sick or you're ill or you're making somebody else sick,” said McKinley.
A manager who spoke with News 10 confirmed the air conditioning has been broken for about six months. It was tolerable because of the winter but now that it is the hottest time of the year it is getting to ‘minimum wage workers.’ The business needs to make $5,000 a week but they are nowhere near that amount. The manager said they are trying to fit the AC but yet nothing has been done, and it’s been a while and staff members feel like they are sitting there like “waiting ducks” and hope the fix will come soon.
“I don't know what their fate going to be, but if anybody have any knowledge of how we can help them because they didn't do anything, we as citizens was concerned about their health and the health of other people around here, because germs pass; epidemics come about all kind of ways, and it was stressful. It was deplorable and they couldn’t work in those conditions for over six months. That's not cool,” said McKinley. “It's been six months, and they can't work like that because something bad is going to happen to somebody.”