“Team Wallraff”: Burger King – systematic exploitation of employees?

In 2014, Günter Wallraff and his team researched the fast food giant Burger King for the first time. During their undercover operations, the investigative journalists uncovered sometimes catastrophic hygiene deficits and working conditions. The company vowed to get better – but has anything really changed in the last eight years? The team wanted to find out with new research. And unfortunately, the new statements from former and current employees suggest one thing above all: exploitation still seems to have a system here.

220 working hours per month

Working in a fast-food restaurant can be extremely stressful in itself: frying burgers non-stop, on your feet all day, night shifts with extreme peak hours when hungry party people – often drunk – storm the place. But what a former employee of Burger King Günter Wallraff says in an interview about his previous working hours goes far beyond that: “Sometimes it’s 13, 14 hours. But that’s normal.” Also that the phone rings when you are actually sick. exceptional cases? “No, that’s the rule!”, according to the informant. The result: “If you work 220 hours a month, you no longer have a private life.” With a 40-hour week, this means that employees sometimes work up to 60 hours of overtime a month.

Employees are spontaneously sent home – without payment

The solution would be obvious: If the shifts cannot be filled sufficiently, more workers would actually have to be found. But the opposite seems to be the case: An internal weekly report from a Burger King branch in Cologne from October 2021 shows that a maximum of 14 percent of the turnover for all restaurants can be used for personnel costs. The consequence: if a branch does not have enough sales, employees are apparently sent home and shifts are postponed. A payment for the lost hours? none. “Under no circumstances should there be too many staff on site”explains the informant. “There is more emphasis on keeping staff costs down than on boosting sales.”

Four kids, two jobs, 24 hour work?

And so apparently a few people have to do the work on site for which significantly more people would actually be needed – especially at weekends. A shift supervisor currently employed at Burger King complains that she lives with her parents but hasn’t seen them lately: “Every day night shift, night shift, night shift. I eventually went insane!” Another employee from the same Cologne branch reports something similar: He has four children and also has a job in a bakery. “I never take a break. I work 24 hours. Way too much.”

According to Günter Wallraff’s first informant, this exploitation has a system: Especially employees with a migration background, who only have a toleration and who fear for their stay, would of course not stay at home under such pressure. “I prefer to hire someone who has just arrived in Germany and doesn’t speak the language and doesn’t know what their rights are. They come here to have a better life and then they are exploited”so the hard conclusion of the ex-employee.

dr Sven Jürgens, specialist lawyer for labor law, is from the “Team Wallraff”-Research shocked: “I think what Burger King is doing here is a huge mess. Labor law regulations are systematically violated, attempts are made to maximize profit at the expense of the weakest. Employees are driven to wear out, and it is accepted that employees become ill. This is a terrible grievance and should definitely be stopped.”

Opinion of “Burger King Germany GmbH”

“Team Wallraff” confronted Burger King Deutschland GmbH with these research results. She replied as follows: “[Wir möchten] point out that Burger King Germany has had new majority owners since May 2022. Since then, a comprehensive change process has been initiated, which also includes significant investments. Some of your research was done well before these incremental changes. (…)

The new owners will continue to invest in the brand and in the German market in order to improve operations in the restaurants and to make day-to-day business easier for employees. (…)

After we learned of your allegations, we – together with our franchise partners – acted immediately and took appropriate measures. We immediately closed the named restaurants and ordered an extraordinary, external audit for all 750 Burger King restaurants in Germany, which will be completed by the end of September 2022 at the latest.”

“Team Wallraff” on September 29 at 8:15 p.m

Are the working conditions at Burger King that bad everywhere? Does the company have the extreme lack of hygiene that “Team Wallraff” uncovered years ago, is now under control – or do customers still eat here at their own risk? And is everything going right with the burger giant’s current vegan campaign? In the new “Team Wallraff”episode – on September 29 at 8:15 p.m. on RTL – find out more!