News

McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook recently stepped down from his position in the company after a company investigation found he had been in a relationship described as “consensual” with an employee. Specific details of the relationship, including the employee’s name, are not public, but Easterbrook has admitted the relationship was a mistake and unprofessional in official comments. Despite the details not being known, we can still inspect why it was for the best that Easterbrook left.

If it was consensual, what’s the problem?

Relationships between employees are against company policy, and enforcing that policy is important for keeping everyone safe. This is because of:

Power Dynamics

If one party in the relationship can control whether or not the other party gets promoted or has a job, it can make the relationship damaging for the work environment and potentially cross the line into workplace harassment. Even if the less distinguished party verbally consents or initiates the situation, it is the responsibility of the more influential party to stop the relationship to protect both of their positions. Relationships between parties of similar positions are different but still aren’t a great idea. 

Potential for Discrimination

Even if power dynamics are not a problem between the parties in a relationship, gender and sexuality often are in the workplace. Women who have been in relationships with coworkers are treated very differently than men in the same situation. The same can be said for same-sex couples when compared to heterosexual couples. Consensual relationships can end, and private relationships can easily become public. This can open both parties up to workplace harassment, which can be severely damaging to productivity and, more importantly, the mental health of the employees.

Shouldn’t We Be Focusing on Abusive Relationships?

Yes. We should. Unfortunately, we often don’t. Large companies have a terrible reputation for protecting executive-suite employees at the expense of abused employees in imbalanced relationships through the use of non-disclosure agreements and settlements. Serious cases of sexual harassment can be easily covered up by policies saying that personal relationships are allowed in the workplace, which is why revising those policies is so important. Ending abusive workplace relationships should be the end-goal of restricting inter-employee relationships. 

Company relationships are complicated and should be handled with care. Steve Easterbrook has probably made the most responsible decision by stepping down without argument. As the CEO of the company, any relationship he would have had with an employee would have had a severe power imbalance, and due to the company’s need to find it through an investigation, it probably wasn’t above board. Easterbrook is providing a good example to those caught in similar situations; it’s better to admit your mistakes and remove yourself from the equation than to deny everything and lead a company while surrounded by mistrust.

A recent development in JUUL’s legal history is a new lawsuit from a former employee. The employee is suing due to their wrongful firing after they raised concerns over contaminated JUUL pod shipments. 

The shipments, which went out earlier in 2019, contained millions of contaminated pods. Despite knowing of the condition of the products, JUUL did not warn its customers or recall the pods, showing negligence towards their business and their clients.

While the defective products have not yet been shown to have caused any deaths, the shipping of the products and subsequent firing of the employee who raised an issue with the action are deeply concerning.

The former employee states in his case that executives were banned from discussing product issues over text, email, or written medium, and that the ex-CEO of the company could be quoted as saying: “Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods.”

This is a disturbing, but not a wholly surprising turn of events from JUUL, and it is unclear where the lawsuit will go. Spokespeople from the company have wholly denied the former employee’s claims.

 Trouble started brewing last week when Anheuser-Busch accused its rival beer company MillerCoors of stealing trade secrets for their most popular beers, Bud Light and Michelob Ultra. The relationship first soured when MC filed a lawsuit against Anheuser-Busch for misleading marketing when Anheuser-Busch suggested that their beers were made without corn syrup back in March. The case resulting in a Wisconsin Federal Court Judge ordering Anheuser-Busch to remove the large “NO CORN SYRUP” labels on Budweiser packages, but the bitter relationship continued to ferment, resulting in a months-long dispute.

Since the court orders of the Spring and Summer, MillerCoors managed to gain access to the recipes and processes to make some of Anheuser-Busch’s more popular beers. The act was taken as an unfair trade practice by Anheuser-Busch, who continued to bring up MillerCoors’ corn syrup accusations. In a court document draft, Anheuser-Busch is quoted writing “the degree of fermentation of MillerCoors’ corn syrup ingredient is less than 100%,” thus leaving some unfermented corn syrup in the product. This sticky situation has called into question the business law surrounding the beer companies, with both sides tapping top litigators to defend them.

The case remains unresolved as of October 22nd, as Anheuser-Busch demands “Trial by jury.”