“We found the group’s managerial policy very bizarre”, says Elise Lucet

Zoé Debussière’s investigation presented by Elise Lucet in Cash Investigation, Thursday April 7 at 9:10 p.m. on France 2, presents all the facets of the multinational McDonald’s. 1,400 restaurants, two million meals sold per day, 75,000 employees in France, five billion euros in annual turnover, but the survey also reveals difficult working conditions, clandestine advertising until 2019 and nutritional qualities not always up to what the brand advertises.

It all started with an audio testimonial received by the team of Cash Investigation as Elise Lucet explains: “We had recordings of McDonald’s employees who were fired from McDonald’s headquarters. We found the group’s managerial policy very bizarre, they were fired in a jiffy with astonishing words like: ‘we blame you for ‘taking your mug and your flower pot from your office the day you left’, ‘you didn’t say hello to me in the hallway’ and we wanted to investigate.” The survey reveals a form of assembly line work in the establishments.

“During the rush, the person who takes care of the fries can lift 300kg of fries over two or three hours. You can imagine what that can do to a body.”

Elise Lucet

on franceinfo

Elise Lucet is rare in the French audiovisual landscape: she stopped on her own initiative in 2016 the presentation of the 1 p.m. of France 2: “When you present a news, you have to do it 100%. I did it for 26 years. And I got fed up at one point, because I felt like I was being repetitive. However, we don’t can’t do that to viewers. So I asked to leave the television news. I remember the head of the information director of France Télévision Thierry Thullier who said to me: ‘You are the only presenter of JT who comes into my office to ask me to leave’, I really wanted to do magazine”, concludes Elise Lucet.