McDonald’s employed victims of modern slavery, an investigation has found.
A criminal gang forced 16 victims to work at a branch of the burger chain in Caxton, Cambridgeshire, where they were exploited for years before police intervened.
One victim was said to have worked a 30-hour shift, despite the UN’s International Labour Organization saying excessive overtime is an indicator of forced labour.
Another sign was also missed: the wages of four men were paid into one bank account, which totalled £215,000.
The victims, whose passports were confiscated, were also forced to work in a bread factory in Hertfordshire which supplied the Co-op, Asda, M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.
A criminal network led by brothers Ernest and Zdenek Drevenak trafficked victims from the Czech Republic and forced them to work between 70 and 100 hours a week. The two brothers were convicted in relation to this.
According to Slavery on the High Street – produced by BBC Local Investigations and to be broadcast on Monday – although the victims earned at least the legal minimum wage, the vast majority of their pay was stolen by the gang.
The victims lived on a few pounds a day in cramped accommodation, which included a leaking shed and an unheated caravan. Meanwhile, their work was funding luxury cars, gold jewellery and a property in the Czech Republic for the gang, police discovered.
On several occasions, victims escaped and fled home only to be tracked down and trafficked back to the UK.
Other warning signs of modern slavery which were overlooked included victims who were unable to speak English and job applications completed by gang members, who sat-in on job interviews as translators.
There were also multiple employees who had the same registered address. Nine victims lived in the same terraced home in north London while working at the bakery.
Pavel, one of the victims who waived his right to anonymity to appear in the programme, said he was homeless in the Czech Republic when the gang approached him in 2016.
He said he was lured with the false promise of a well-paid job in the UK, where he could at the time work legally.
Speaking of the impact the human trafficking had on him, Pavel said: “You can’t undo the damage to my mental health, it will always live with me.”
“We were afraid… If we were to escape and go home, [Ernest Drevenak] has a lot of friends in our town, half the town were his mates.
“I do feel partially exploited by McDonald’s because they didn’t act… I thought if I was working for McDonald’s, that they would be a little bit more cautious, that they will notice it.”
Have to wonder how they managed to employ these guys without ability to speak English (always thought most McDonalds employees are moved about tills/fries/cook/drivethrough etc.. be very difficult if unable to understand orders/coworkers/public) really hope these brothers spend a long time in the crappiest jailcell either here or in the Czech Republic…
I mean, have you seen how uber eats works? It’s prime placement for this kind of thing. I once ordered from uber ears and the person who was delivering it was supposedly a young asian woman. When it arrived it was delivered by a huge bloke. I raised it with uber as it seemed a bit dangerous and I wanted fo let them know in case it was someone using an illegal profile to work when they shouldn’t. For example: whats to stop someone setting up an account via another person, say a convicted r*pist, and they are the ones going around delivering. Not hard to see how that can go wrong if a lone female orders a meal for one and the guy dropping it off knows this etc Uber didn’t seem bothered and just said sometimes the person delivering passes the delivery off to another driver and shrugged it off.
Plus whats to stop a team of traffickers sending out a bunch of illegals to do this by holding onto their passports and forcing their wages into their own set up accounts etc
I’m sure there are some protocols around registering as a delivery driver but not sure they are that stringent if they don’t even know who delivered my takeaway that day.
We are all modern slavery victims.
Why is it that the government says we need immigration for jobs but then fails to protect this tiny island’s job market from organised gangs? These people can’t operate entirely off cash so there has to be a failing paper trail somewhere which also means they aren’t paying tax. This is why our society is falling apart, not because of immigration but a failure to ensure that it is generating tax from jobs and benefiting the nation’s people. Britain has forgotten trying to help its own and has decided it wants to save the world
Time for ID cards. The Right: an English man’s right not to. The Left: that’d be SO unfair.
6 comments
***The Telegraph reports***:
McDonald’s employed victims of modern slavery, an investigation has found.
A criminal gang forced 16 victims to work at a branch of the burger chain in Caxton, Cambridgeshire, where they were exploited for years before police intervened.
One victim was said to have worked a 30-hour shift, despite the UN’s International Labour Organization saying excessive overtime is an indicator of forced labour.
Another sign was also missed: the wages of four men were paid into one bank account, which totalled £215,000.
The victims, whose passports were confiscated, were also forced to work in a bread factory in Hertfordshire which supplied the Co-op, Asda, M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.
A criminal network led by brothers Ernest and Zdenek Drevenak trafficked victims from the Czech Republic and forced them to work between 70 and 100 hours a week. The two brothers were convicted in relation to this.
According to Slavery on the High Street – produced by BBC Local Investigations and to be broadcast on Monday – although the victims earned at least the legal minimum wage, the vast majority of their pay was stolen by the gang.
The victims lived on a few pounds a day in cramped accommodation, which included a leaking shed and an unheated caravan. Meanwhile, their work was funding luxury cars, gold jewellery and a property in the Czech Republic for the gang, police discovered.
On several occasions, victims escaped and fled home only to be tracked down and trafficked back to the UK.
Other warning signs of modern slavery which were overlooked included victims who were unable to speak English and job applications completed by gang members, who sat-in on job interviews as translators.
There were also multiple employees who had the same registered address. Nine victims lived in the same terraced home in north London while working at the bakery.
Pavel, one of the victims who waived his right to anonymity to appear in the programme, said he was homeless in the Czech Republic when the gang approached him in 2016.
He said he was lured with the false promise of a well-paid job in the UK, where he could at the time work legally.
Speaking of the impact the human trafficking had on him, Pavel said: “You can’t undo the damage to my mental health, it will always live with me.”
“We were afraid… If we were to escape and go home, [Ernest Drevenak] has a lot of friends in our town, half the town were his mates.
“I do feel partially exploited by McDonald’s because they didn’t act… I thought if I was working for McDonald’s, that they would be a little bit more cautious, that they will notice it.”
**Full story:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/30/mcdonalds-employed-modern-slavery-victims-in-uk/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/30/mcdonalds-employed-modern-slavery-victims-in-uk/)
Have to wonder how they managed to employ these guys without ability to speak English (always thought most McDonalds employees are moved about tills/fries/cook/drivethrough etc.. be very difficult if unable to understand orders/coworkers/public) really hope these brothers spend a long time in the crappiest jailcell either here or in the Czech Republic…
I mean, have you seen how uber eats works? It’s prime placement for this kind of thing. I once ordered from uber ears and the person who was delivering it was supposedly a young asian woman. When it arrived it was delivered by a huge bloke. I raised it with uber as it seemed a bit dangerous and I wanted fo let them know in case it was someone using an illegal profile to work when they shouldn’t. For example: whats to stop someone setting up an account via another person, say a convicted r*pist, and they are the ones going around delivering. Not hard to see how that can go wrong if a lone female orders a meal for one and the guy dropping it off knows this etc Uber didn’t seem bothered and just said sometimes the person delivering passes the delivery off to another driver and shrugged it off.
Plus whats to stop a team of traffickers sending out a bunch of illegals to do this by holding onto their passports and forcing their wages into their own set up accounts etc
I’m sure there are some protocols around registering as a delivery driver but not sure they are that stringent if they don’t even know who delivered my takeaway that day.
We are all modern slavery victims.
Why is it that the government says we need immigration for jobs but then fails to protect this tiny island’s job market from organised gangs? These people can’t operate entirely off cash so there has to be a failing paper trail somewhere which also means they aren’t paying tax. This is why our society is falling apart, not because of immigration but a failure to ensure that it is generating tax from jobs and benefiting the nation’s people. Britain has forgotten trying to help its own and has decided it wants to save the world
Time for ID cards. The Right: an English man’s right not to. The Left: that’d be SO unfair.
Carry on muddling along.