Fast food workers, other low-wage employees launch nationwide strike
by Ned Resnikoff
Fast-food workers in roughly 190 cities nationwide are set to walk off the job Thursday morning, demanding an industry-wide base wage of $15 per hour and the right to form a union. Thursday’s strike, the latest in a series of day-long labor actions coordinated through a nationwide coalition of various fast food worker groups, may well be the largest work stoppage in the history of the industry, if early organizer estimates prove to be accurate.
This will also be the first strike since the campaign began in November 2012 to include work stoppages at businesses other than fast-food restaurants. Organizers say that some employees of dollar stores and convenience stores in about two dozen cities are also walking off the job, a sign that the campaign is extending its reach into other parts of the service and retail sector. By recruiting workers from outside the fast food business, organizers for the fast food campaign appear to be knitting together a broader low-wage campaign that crosses industry barriers.
The fast-food campaign does have a strike fund for workers who can’t afford to take a day off, but the campaign denies otherwise paying anyone to attend. In response to multiple requests from Al Jazeera to provide evidence to corroborate its claims that workers are paid to strike, a McDonald's spokesperson wrote in an email statement that the company would "only share information we know to be accurate," but did not provide any additional information.
These corporations greed is nothing new but these workers are fed up. I am too.
Way back in the 1970 when I read in the newspaper that McDonalds was lobbying the Nixon Administration to LOWER the minimum wage, I decided not to eat at McDonald's any more and I haven't been back.