Nine
months after fast food workers in New York City walked off the job on “Black
Friday,” their efforts to change the industry’s pay standards have gone
national. Workers are striking in roughly 50 cities on Thursday in hopes of
converting the trickle of strikes throughout the summer in cities like Seattle,
St. Louis, and Milwaukee into a flood.
In addition to the nine cities that have
already seen strikes this
summer, places like Boston, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, and Hartford are
joining the fight on Thursday. Organizers welcomed reports that one restaurant manager in
Hartford plans to
fire anyone who participates in the strike, saying that such illegal
retaliation will only bring immediate high-profile pressure from workers and
their supporters, further raising the profile of the effort to end poverty
wages in food service.
Kyle King, a Burger King
cashier in Boston, told the Boston Globe that he and the thousands of other
workers expected to strike Thursday have to risk being fired if they want to change anything. “I don’t know what I’ll lose
first,” King said, “lose my job or lose my sanity.” Thursday also brings the
fast food strikes to major cities in the south for the first time. Unions are less powerful in the south, and
legal protections for workers tend to be weaker in southern states.
Low-wage workers in the
retail and fast food industries have been walking off the job since last year
to demand a minimum wage of $15 and the right to organize into unions. The fast
food industry’s profits have soared, but those
gains haven’t trickled down to workers. Fast food jobs, like the other low-wage
service sector jobs that have been the primary source of
post-recession job growth, do not currently allow workers to support
themselves financially. McDonald’s recommends that its employees find a second job and go without heat or air conditioning in order to survive on the
chain’s typical wages.
As the strikes have spread,
the drumbeat to raise the minimum wage has grown louder. One congressional proposal would raise the
federal minimum wage to $10 an hour, which would barely catch up to the buying
power the minimum wage had in 1968.
Fast food operations in other countries and a handful of chains in the U.S. that are committed to paying livable wages have shown that
companies can still make healthy profits while paying substantially higher
wages.
UPDATE
According to a press release from organizers, Thursday’s strike
has exceeded expectations with workers in 58 cities are participating. From the
release: “Workers went on the pre-Labor Day strike in Alameda, CA; Atlanta;
Aurora, CO; Austin, TX; Ballwin, MO; Belleville, Ill; Berkeley, CA;
Bloomington, Ill; Boston; Charlotte; Chicago; Columbia, MO; Dallas; Denver;
Detroit; Durham; East St. Louis, Ill; Flint; Fremont, CA; Greensboro; Gretna,
LA; Hartford; Hayward, CA; Houston; Indianapolis; Kansas City, MO; Lansing; Las
Vegas; Los Angeles; Madison, WI; Manchester, CT; Memphis; Milwaukee; Missoula,
MT; Newark, CA; New Orleans; New York; Northglenn, CO; North Las Vegas;
Oakland; Richmond, CA; Peoria; Phoenix; Pontiac, MI; Raleigh; Richmond, CA; San
Diego; San Leandro, CA; San Lorenzo, CA.; Seattle; Springfield, Ill; St. Louis;
Tacoma, WA; Tampa; Topeka, KS; Wausau, WI; West Haven, CT; and Wilmington, DE.”
No comments:
Post a Comment