05/01/2026
BREAKING: Ahead of May Day, Popeyes workers in Los Angeles are on strike due to life-threatening workplace violence, extreme heat, cockroaches in the kitchen, wage theft, and broken restroom, to the point we’ve been forced to urinate in a closet drain because it is the only place without cameras.
Let's talk about the violence at this store:
Within the last six months alone, an angry customer threw a drink, a chair, and a “wet floor” sign at a coworker.
A customer assaulted a coworker of ours.
A man jumped the counter to steal soda, endangering a pregnant worker at the cash register.
The best our bosses would do is put a table sideways in front of the counter to make it “harder for people to jump the counter.”
That's not a safety plan.
One day at around 11PM after we had closed the store but were still cleaning, a man came up to the drive thru and thrust his foot through the window, shattering it.
All of this, and we've never been trained on what to do during and after a violent incident or how to de-escalate when customers get mad.
Other safety issues:
We see cockroaches in the kitchen nearly every day.
Indoor temperatures reach 98° due to an AC that has been broken since last year.
Wage theft:
In addition, management also makes it nearly impossible for us to use our legally earned paid sick leave - as a result, we have to work sick. It's gotten so bad some of us had to work with colds and diarrhea.
Our coworkers didn’t even know about paid sick leave rights until they learned about them from our union.
We learned the paid sick leave policies at Popeye’s are illegal, now we're striking to reverse the abuses in this store.
Today's strike is in Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson's district, and as he pointed out at the May Day presentation at City Council yesterday "The whole thing shuts down without workers. Workers need to stand together and when workers stand together and workers win, we all win." - We look forward to continuing working with him to ensure every fast food worker in Los Angeles can be equipped with the knowledge to win in our stores.