EPI is chronicling the stories of working people, shedding light on the chronic imbalance of power between employer and employee.
 
Take Bruce Miller. Last week, we shared his story of spending nearly four decades of his life working for Sears in New Jersey, repairing cars. Bruce was forced to go from being an hourly employee with good pay and benefits to a commission-based wage earner after a hedge fund took over the iconic retailer. Bruce's story is one of millions throughout our country where employees are mistreated by the employers as a result of an inherent imbalance of power.
 
Today, EPI's "Worker Stories" brings you the story of Angely Rodriguez Lambert, who was in the middle of her shift as a cashier at McDonald’s in Oakland, California, this spring when she started to feel sick. Her manager instructed Lambert to keep working.
 
EPI is fighting every day to strengthen the rights of working people, like Angely. Make a year-end tax-deductible donation today to fund our critical research to end the imbalance of bargaining power in the workplace and demand workplace equality.
 
The McDonald's restaurant where Angely worked had installed protective barriers and provided safety gear for workers, but it was not allowing the growing number of workers with COVID-19 symptoms to stop working. Nor were workers being told when their coworkers tested positive. If no one could cover their shift, employees were expected at work, symptomatic or not. Angely later tested positive for COVID-19, along with nearly three dozen of her coworkers and their extended family members, including a 10-month-old child.
 
As the virus roared through the franchise, Angely and the other workers kept coming into work, because they couldn’t afford not to. 
 
With no sick time, missing work meant not getting paid—not an option for workers getting by on minimum wage. “Imagine living here without any money,” she told a reporter at the time. “I can’t stay in my home if I don’t pay the rent, and I need to eat and send money to my family.”[1]