THE response of McDonald’s to the invention that trafficking and exploitation were going down in certainly one of its restaurants in Cambridgeshire has been “poor”, the director for contemporary slavery at CCLA, Dame Sara Thornton, wrote in The Times on Tuesday.
The company had “missed quite a few opportunities to forestall harm”, she wrote, and there was “no record of them taking responsibility or expressing any form of regret to a bunch of extremely vulnerable people” who were “living in fear, some homeless and most traumatised”.
There had also been “a scarcity of engagement with CCLA as an investor after we contacted them about rectifying damage done to the victims”. The working hours had included 30-hour shifts and 100-hour weeks.
The franchisees who had run the branch throughout the exploitation now had almost 50 branches between them, she wrote. CCLA, which began because the Church of England investment fund, is now the UK’s largest charity fund manager.
This week, a McDonald’s spokesperson said that “it was only through close co-operation with the police to help in the excellent and lengthy criminal investigation that the franchisee was exposed to the total depth of those horrific, complex and complex crimes . . . we now have taken motion to strengthen the power of our people and systems to detect and deter potential risks.
“In addition, last 12 months, we began our partnership with Unseen, a number one expert organisation that specialises in addressing modern slavery issues. . . We care deeply in regards to the welfare of each certainly one of the 159,000 people.”
