Kate Taylor | Mar 24, 2020
Burger King’s biggest franchisee, Carrols Restaurant Group, is cutting workers’ wages by 10% amid the coronavirus outbreak.
Carrols, which operates about 1,034 Burger King and 65 Popeyes locations, emailed employees on Monday to inform them of the pay cuts.
“One of the initiatives that we will be implementing is a temporary 10% pay reduction effective Monday March 30, 2020 from your gross pay,” Jerry DiGenova, Carrols’ vice president of human resources, wrote.
“This is subject to applicable state minimum wage laws,” the email added. “This was a difficult decision to come to, but while this will impact each of us as individual employees of Carrols, it will help us collectively as the Carrols team during this time.”
A Carrols representative confirmed that the 10% pay cut applied to everyone at the company, from in-store workers and cashiers to executives. A Burger King representative did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
‘Never have I felt a company has committed more injustice than today’
burger king worker
“Most companies right now are paying their employees extra money for the hazardous conditions that being an ‘essential employee’ are putting them in,” he told Business Insider. “While I am under no disillusion that I am an essential employee … for some reason fast food has been labeled as such (even though our sales are already down 50%, and we are considered one of the busier restaurants in our district).”