Dick's Drive-Ins President Responds To Employee Complaints

SEATTLE — Last week, five employees at two Dick's Drive-Ins lodged formal complaints about the company, alleging that managers had failed to follow several COVID-19 safety precautions, creating an unsafe and unsanitary work environment.

Now, Dick's Drive-Ins President Jasmine Donovan has released an open letter responding to those reports, saying an internal investigation by the company found little proof to back the employee's claims.

"Our investigation finds that most of these claims are demonstrably without merit," writes Donovan. "The other allegations could only reference isolated incidents because they would be blatant violations of our procedures, techniques, training and values."

But Working Washington, a worker advocacy group who helped share the employee's complaints, say it's unconvinced by Donovan's defense.

"I find it demonstrably without merit to think that company management could respond to serious claims by investigating itself, and then immediately clearing itself on the grounds that conditions were up to the company's own standards," writes Working Washington's Sage Wilson. "The thing is — we knew conditions were up to managers' standards — that’s the problem. That’s why workers couldn’t get the issues resolved and had to take the step of filing formal complaints."

In their complaints, the five employees recounted a variety of safety issues, some of which were related to the pandemic. One employee claimed that the company pushed employees to come back to work, even though they may have contracted COVID-19:

"My manager has pressured my coworkers and I to come into work even though we were awaiting test results for Covid-19. And on multiple occasions during the pandemic, managers have come into work even though they were visibly sick."

Others complained that management had not enforced masking requirements for customers or employees.

"I have been instructed not to turn away maskless customers or push them to wear masks, but rather to serve customers faster to avoid prolonged contact," said one.

Several complaints were unrelated to the ongoing pandemic, including reports of injuries due to wet floors and severe burns due to inadequate protection.

In her response, Donovan says the company performed unannounced inspections of both the Broadway and Queen Anne locations. Both inspections reportedly found nothing, though Donovan does not that both locations have more difficult work environments than other Dick's Drive-Ins:

"Our Broadway and Queen Anne locations can be two of our most challenging in which to work. The buildings are older, especially our Broadway location, and the environment around the locations can be rough."

Working Washington says these self-investigations aren't enough, calling them a PR stunt to avoid addressing deep-rooted issues:

"Overall — we know if the company took these issues seriously, they would have already dealt with them — so it’s a bit disappointing but no great surprise that they’re dealing with this as a PR complaint followed-up via a mass email, rather than a health & safety issue worth a little bit more that rapid self-investigation, self-acquittal, and self-congratulations."

Working Washington also takes offense at the following portion of Donovan's letter, which it says implies that one of the employees had been disgruntled and frustrated by denied time off requests:

In fact, one of the employees who filed a complaint reached out to me a few weeks ago to share that he was frustrated that he did not get the time off he wanted. Before I had a chance to respond, he followed up to say he quit. Neither message mentioned anything other than his dissatisfaction with his time off request.

The advocacy groups says the dismissal paints the worker in a negative light and is intended to have a "chilling effect" to keep other employees from coming forward.

Donovan's letter does address whistleblower protections, saying that the company will not be striking back at the remaining employees who came forward:

Because these complaints were widely publicized, we immediately reminded all managers and employees of our zero-tolerance policy for retaliation against employees who bring forward concerns, formally or informally.

All five employees filed their complaints with the Department of Labor & Industries, which has yet to complete its investigation.