Across the country, fast-food workers in about a hundred cities are walking off the job in their largest effort yet to push for higher wages. Organizers are calling for a pay hike to $15 an hour, but they face opposition from the National Restaurant Association, which says such an increase would cause restaurants to hire fewer workers and rely more on automation.
a new report exposes how fast-food CEOs have not just saved money by paying workers low wages, they’ve also used the government to subsidize their own million-dollar salaries with taxpayer dollars. That’s because a loophole in the tax code lets companies deduct the costs of performance-based executive pay.
Camille Rivera talking:
Hundreds of people marched right into the McDonald’s. the statements were made. hen people left, among them workers right at that store at 51st and Broadway.
a number of coalition organizations, United New York being one of them, Fast Food Forward, New York Communities for Change, and partners such as Make the Road New York. And we have been, for the past year and a half, working with other, you know, organizations, clergy, etc., to create a support network for these workers. And these workers have been leading the fight over the last year and a half, really taking it to their employers, basically saying, you know, “We definitely demand respect. We need respect. We demand $15 an hour.” And it’s been a wonderful campaign that has been very inclusive, and it’s a campaign that’s been very tied to the community.
some of the prior actions of some of the workers who have walked out. it’s ranged from worker intimidation to potential—to firings, to threats. I mean, workers are getting—you know, are definitely under the microscope and being intimidated at their workplaces, and they continue to push on. We have workers who have, you know, organized their own strikes on their own, wildcat strikes, where they said, “Well, I’m not going to take this anymore; I’m going to walk off this job.” We’ve had community and clergy go there and do delegations and talk to the owners, demanding—from the communities themselves, saying, “You will not do this in my community. You will not intimidate workers.” And it’s just been so amazing. It’s been an amazing opportunity. Workers are emboldened. Workers are empowered. And they are continuing their fight.
there’s a tendency sometimes by some companies, when they have these kind of organizing campaigns, to start either raising wages to prevent a unionization campaign from being successful. But its not happening.
there’s a children’s story about this cow that—that they’re doing organizing. And they say, “Well, you know, we can get 10 cents. You know, if I give you 10 cents, is that OK?” It’s actually not OK; they need 15 and union.
One woman, Elba, who had just come from inside working, she worked there for six years, no vacation pay, no sick pay, makes $7.50 an hour, said she had gotten one raise in six years to bring it up to $7.50, and could not support her family on that.
you see workers having this job working in two fast-food—you know, two fast-food stores. They, some of them, live in shelters. We’ve had a number of workers that live in shelters. We’ve had a number of workers who are on some sort of public assistance just to be able to make ends meet. We have a story of a worker who works in Upper Manhattan and lives in Brooklyn and walks to work every day because he can’t afford to actually have transportation, because he has to eat, and he has to provide for his family. I mean, it’s pretty devastating, the stories that are out there, and it’s unconscionable. And I think that there’s a responsibility and there needs to be a responsibility from these corporations to basically look at themselves and say, you’re making billions of dollars in profits; you are, you know, part of this public—you’re part of this service worker industry; you have a responsibility to pay these workers what they deserve.
if you think about two or three years ago, I mean, you were following the press when, you know, kind of the Wisconsin stuff was happening, this message of anti-austerity and—I mean, you know, of austerity and that the workers were responsible for this. And people were—definitely in the political sphere, you saw like officials being scared to say, “Oh, OK, we’ll raise wages a little bit, but we can’t actually raise them to what you guys are talking about. I mean, $15, that’s way too much.” And, you know, what you’ve seen over the last two years is a wave. Because of the Occupy movement, because of low-wage workers really pushing the envelope and demanding respect, you see people joining that kind of message and that chorus that, you know, we need to raise wages. And you see that in Seattle. You see that here in New York. You see that across the country.
there is a growing grassroot effort among community organizations and with the support of other organizations all across the country. You know, people are actually organizing on the ground on their own, as well. Like, I mean, you know, we get information online where workers say, “I’m in,” I don’t know, “Kansas, and I’m actually going to strike my store today.” And it’s pretty amazing. And it’s because what they’ve seen in New York and what they’ve seen across the country.
– source democracynow.org
Camille Rivera, executive director of United NY, part of the newly formed New Day New York Coalition, which has organized this week of action to fight income inequality and build economic fairness.