Fast-Food Workers to Strike to Super-Size Their Wages
The workers want a pay raise, and politicians are listening.
Fast-food workers in 150 major cities will protest for better wages Thursday.
As fast-food workers in 150 cities prepare to demonstrate outside of major chains like McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC on Thursday – the latest protest in a campaign demanding better wages – President Barack Obama has made it clear which side he stands on.
“All across the country right now there’s a national movement going on made up of fast-food workers organizing to lift wages so they can provide for their families with pride and dignity,” Obama said at Milwaukee Laborfest this week. “There is no denying a simple truth: America deserves a raise. Give America a raise."
The protesters are demanding a $15-an-hour wage as well as the right to unionize. Among Thursday’s protesters will be Ronnie Kitchen, who has worked at a Chicago Burger King for four months making Illinois' minimum wage of $8.25 an hour.
“I’m participating because I’m doing whatever it takes. I’m tired of living in poverty,” he says.
While wages in general have stagnated, those in the restaurant industry continue to be particularly low.A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute found that restaurant wages are significantly lower than those in other industries (a median of $10/hour compared to $18 for non-restaurant jobs), and the percentage of restaurant workers living below the poverty line is more than double (16.7 percent) the percentage of those outside the industry (6.3 percent) who are below the line.
The report also found the that the lowest paid occupation within the industry is that of cashier or counter attendant, where employees are typically paid $8.23 an hour.
“It's not just teenagers who are looking for pocket change. It’s mothers and fathers who want to support their families,” Kitchen says. The Center for Economic and Policy Research found that only 30 percent of fast-food workers are teenagers.
Fueling Kitchen's frustration is the question of fairness, given how his wages compare to those at the top. One study found that fast-food CEOs are making 1,200 times the average worker’s pay. Notably, this week's protests come only two months after the National Labor Relations Board ruled thatMcDonald’s Corp. shares responsibility with its franchises for the treatment of its workers.
“McDonald's now has a huge excuse that's no longer valid,” says Michele Simon, author of "Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back."
Workers will engage in picketing, “teach-ins” at restaurants and impromptu press conferences, much like during previous protests that started in New York in 2012. Thursday's protests will be the first major demonstration since a July conference of workers, organized in part by the Service Employees International Union, during which the movement's “Fight for $15” message was crystallized. Leaders have also signaled that this time around, workers in some communities will engage in civil disobedience, meaning the sort of demonstrations that invite arrests.
The fast-food industry – represented in Washington by the National Restaurant Association – is using the SEIU’s involvement, as well as the plans for a tougher approach, to push back at protesters’ efforts.
“This is a national, multimillion-dollar campaign engineered, organized and funded by national labor groups. The activities have proved to be orchestrated union PR events where the vast majority of participants are activists and paid demonstrators,” Scott DeFife, the restaurant association's executive vice president for policy and government affairs, tells U.S. News in an email. “This is nothing more than labor groups’ self-interested attempts to boost their dwindling membership by targeting restaurant employees.
"We hope labor organizers will not escalate with aggressive tactics or intimidation, and will act with respect toward our customers and employees.”
Protest organizers say they are appealing to corporations directly and their efforts should not be conflated with the broader push for raising the minimum wage. Nevertheless, as the industry appears to be digging in on the workers’ demands, the movement's influence is evident in the change in conversations about what kind of wages workers should be expected to live on.
In a span of months last year, Obama upped his original call for a $9 minimum wage to $10.10.
“Where these strikes have been successful has been really shifting the goal posts in terms of what folks think the minimum-wage floor should be,” says Economic Policy Institute analyst David Cooper.
As efforts to raise the federal $7.25-an-hour minimum wage have gone nowhere – in part because of the lobbying efforts by organizations like the National Restaurant Association, which has argued such a raise would kill jobs and increase food prices – the movement has seen the most success on the local level. Seattle will have the country’s highest minimum wage – $15 by 2018 – per an initiative passed in June, and come November San Franciscans will vote to match it.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a Democrat, is floating a proposal for a $13.25-an-hour minimum wage while a number of other cities have considered similar measures in recent months, in addition to the 10 states that raised their minimum wages this year.
“What the fast-food movement has done is make it that cities are considering and actually enacting wage levels that we would not have seen had it not been for the organization of fast-food workers,” says Tsedeye Gebreselassie, senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project.
Though traditionally a Democratic issue, some Republicans – like Arkansas gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson – also support minimum wage increases.
Even if fast-food workers see their demands as separate from the larger minimum wage debate, to get corporations to follow suit, Thursday's protesters will benefit if they have the public on their side.
“A lot of Americans are feeling the pain from stagnant wages, so that is an issue they identify with,” Gebreselassie says.
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