Did you know there was a national movement to raise the minimum wage being led by fast food workers? I didn’t until I wondered through downtown Brooklyn to a gathering of young people chanting a remix of 2Chainz popular song, Started From the Bottom, “7.25 Just Ain’t Fair. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Oh yeah!”
Last Thursday, August 29, thousands of fast-food workers protested in at least 60 cities nationwide in an action known as “National Strike Against Low Pay Day,” a week after the commemoration of the March on Washington and the week before Labor Day. After having no success trying to get Congress to increase the minimum wage, workers took their fight directly to their corporate employers. The strike has forced some restaurants to close their doors.
While some think, “those rude teenagers should be lucky they even have a job,” the actual profile of a fast food worker is quite different than the perception. The majority of the more than four million people working in the fast-food industry are not teenagers. Their average age is 35 years old, they work full time and depend on their wages for half of their family’s total income.
While some think, “those rude teenagers should be lucky they even have a job,” the actual profile of a fast food worker is quite different than the perception. The majority of the more than four million people working in the fast-food industry are not teenagers. Their average age is 35 years old, they work full time and depend on their wages for half of their family’s total income.
In this era of rising prices, is $7.25 enough to live on? Well, ask McDonald’s. Instead of increasing wages, they posted “The Practical Money Skills Budget Journal,” (http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/mcdonalds/budgetJournal/budgetJournal.php) on their website. The budget assumes you are working a second job for a total of 75 hours a week and does not allot money towards expenses such as heat.
Check out Stephen Colbert’s hilarious report on the rhetoric surrounding the labor debate. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/427948/july-22-2013/minimum-wage---mcdonald-s-spending-journal
In striking, the fast-food workers join teachers, postal workers, transit workers, police officers, sanitation workers, air traffic controllers, hotel workers and many more in a legacy of fighting for dignified labor. The workers demands are simple. They want to raise the minimum wage and have the right to form a union without retaliation. Join in solidarity with these workers by boycotting fast food restaurants until their demands are met.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/fast-food-strike-96032.html#ixzz2dmUsDWfS
Check out Stephen Colbert’s hilarious report on the rhetoric surrounding the labor debate. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/427948/july-22-2013/minimum-wage---mcdonald-s-spending-journal
In striking, the fast-food workers join teachers, postal workers, transit workers, police officers, sanitation workers, air traffic controllers, hotel workers and many more in a legacy of fighting for dignified labor. The workers demands are simple. They want to raise the minimum wage and have the right to form a union without retaliation. Join in solidarity with these workers by boycotting fast food restaurants until their demands are met.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/fast-food-strike-96032.html#ixzz2dmUsDWfS