Fast food workers strike to supersize their wages

Reuters/AFP/New YorkFast-food workers staged strikes at McDonald’s and Burger Kings and demonstrated at other stores in sixty US cities yesterday in their latest action in a nearly year-long campaign to raise wages in the service sector.The strikes spread quickly across the country and have shut down restaurants in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, St Louis, Raleigh and Seattle, according to organisers.The fast-food workers were expected to be joined by retail staff from stores owned by Macy’s Incorporated, Sears Holdings Corporation and Dollar Tree Incorporated.The fast-food workers want to form unions in the virtually union-free sector without employer retaliation and bargain for higher wages.They are demanding pay of $15 an hour, up from $7.25, which is the current federal minimum wage.Martin Rafanan, a community organiser in St Louis, said local employees of McDonald’s and Wendy’s can’t make it on the salaries.“If you’re paying $7.35 an hour and employing someone for 20, 25 hours a week, which is the average here, they’re bringing home about $10,000 a year. You can’t survive on that.” Rafanan said.Missouri’s minimum wage is $7.35 an hour.“Unless we can figure out how to make highly profitable companies pay a fair wage to their workers, we’re just going to watch them pull all the blood, sweat, tears and money out of our communities.”McDonald’s profits totaled $5.47bn in 2012.Momentum has been building in recent months, organisers say, as they receive financial and technical support from the Service Employees International Union, community activists, politicians and the clergy.“They make millions that come from our feet. They can afford to pay us better,” Shaniqua Davis, 20, told AFP at a demonstration outside a McDonald’s on New York’s posh Fifth Avenue.Davis has a one-year-old child and works at a branch of the restaurant in the Bronx where she earns $7.25 an hour.“I have bills to pay. I need to buy diapers. I can hardly buy food. I am treated good but we need more money.”She said if it wasn’t for food stamps and help she received to pay her rent “I would already be on the street”.Kendall Fells of the campaign group Fast Food Forward hit out at working conditions for people who had “no health insurance, no guarantee of hours”.“In (New York City) they make $7.25 an hour. If you look at any statistics of how much it takes you to survive in NYC, just food, clothing and rent, it’s over $20 an hour.”Last November, some 200 workers walked off their fast-food jobs in New York City. Groups in Chicago, Kansas City, Detroit and other cities followed their lead in April and July.“Hold the burgers, hold the fries, make worker wages supersize!” read a tweet from Fight for 15, a workers organising committee.Many of the 3mn fast-food workers in America don’t work full-time and cannot count on tips like those who staff bars and restaurants.“Many of these workers have children and are trying to support a family,” said Mary Kay Henry of the Service Employees International Union, which is supporting the strike.“The median wage (including managerial staff) of $9.08 an hour still falls far below the federal poverty line for a worker lucky enough to get 40 hours a week and never have to take a sick day.”As the movement goes viral, it has become clear that the traditional image of a McDonald’s worker – a carefree adolescent flipping burgers until something better comes along – has changed.Fells from Fast Food Forward said that after the recession the average age of a fast food worker was 28. Two-thirds were women with an average age of 32.“More people are looking to this as a real job rather than a transition or entry-level job,” said Jefferson Cowie, of Cornell University’s  Department of Labor Relations, Law, and History.Cowie told AFP that while wages have stagnated in the industry since the 1970s, “the recession really did not help”.Neither has unemployment and the increased difficulty of accessing higher education.He said that he was not optimistic for the short-term success of the strike because, in the case of outlets like McDonald’s, each branch is owned by an individual rather than the enterprise.“It’s a really important social pressure (but) they are not going to change things overnight. It will be a huge long-term struggle.”The $200bn US fast-food sector as well as retail sales and food preparation have been under the spotlight because they have added most of the jobs, in many cases lower-paying and part time, since the recession.Restaurant chains and trade groups say the protests are unwarranted because fast-food and retail outlets provide Americans with millions of good jobs with competitive pay and ample opportunities to rise through the ranks.“Our history is full of examples of individuals who worked their first job with McDonald’s and went on to successful careers both within and outside of McDonald’s,” McDonald’s said in a statement.Wendy’s and Burger King did not respond to requests for comment.The restaurant chains have not changed their wage policies as a result of recent strikes.The National Retail Federation said in a statement the strikes are “further proof that the labour movement (has) abdicated their role in an honest and rational discussion about the American workforce.”The National Restaurant Association defended the industry, saying it provided opportunity through jobs “that meet critical needs within our economy”.“The fact is, only 5% of restaurant employees earn the minimum wage and those that do are predominantly working part-time and half are teenagers,” said Scott DeFife, executive vice-president of policy and government affairs with the organisation. “Restaurant jobs teach valuable skills and a strong work ethic that are useful for workers throughout their professional careers.”And in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, the conservative Employment Policies Institute (EPI) ran a full-page ad with a picture of a robot making pancakes, warning that higher wages would mean “fewer entry-level jobs and more automated alternative”s”“You can either raise prices and lose customers, or (automate) those jobs,” said Michael Saltsman, EPI’s research director, adding that “the idea that restaurants are rolling in the money is not representative of the situation franchisees face”.The median wage for front-line fast-food workers is $8.94 per hour, according to an analysis of government data by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), an advocacy group for lower-wage workers.“The workers are responding to total failure on behalf of the federal government to raise the minimum wage to keep up with inflation and the cost of living,” said Tsedeye Gebreselassie, an attorney at the NELP, referring to the strikes.The walkouts, coming before the US Labour Day holiday on Monday, also took place in the Southern states of Texas, Louisiana, and North Carolina.Dorian Warren, an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University who has published work on labour organising and inequality, said the significance of protests in the South is “a huge, huge deal”.“The South has always been the model for low wage employment, from slavery to the Jim Crow laws, to the present. It’s also the most anti-union part of the country, so the fact that workers feel empowered enough to take collective action is enormous,” Warren said.