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Fast-Food Strikes And Protests To Hit Hundreds Of Cities

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TheDemSocialist

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Letasha Irby works at a factory in Selma, Alabama, that produces car seats and headrests for Hyundai cars. It’s just the sort of manufacturing job that Americans historically associate with solid, middle-class wages. Yet Irby says she earns only $12 per hour after a decade of service at her plant.On Tuesday, Irby plans on driving to Tuscaloosa after she finishes her shift at the factory. She’ll be joining a protest alongside people who, on the surface, wouldn’t seem to be in the same economic class as herself: fast-food workers from chains like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut.
“I have a whole lot in common with them,” said Irby, a 37-year-old Alabama native and mother of two. “Whether it’s fast food, retail, child care … we’re all being underpaid for our services.”
Irby says she wants to be part of the next phase of the Fight for 15, the labor union-backed campaign that has shamed low-wage employers and helped spur minimum wage hikes around the country. The campaign launched three years ago this month with a walkout by restaurant workers in New York City. It has since spread to cities around the country and to industries well beyond fast food.
Spokespeople for the campaign say it plans to launch one-day worker strikes in 270 cities on Tuesday, its largest demonstration yet. In the past, many of these worker walkouts have been negligible -- single digits in small towns, made visible only with the help of community activists. But others, in cities such as New York and Chicago, have been significant enough to disrupt service or even temporarily shut down restaurants, forcing major chains to publicly address the issue of poverty wages.
The Fight for 15 is funded by the Service Employees International Union, which represents 1.5 million workers mostly in the service sector. Three years in, it is still no clearer where exactly the campaign is headed, or how it plans to become a sustainable model for labor activism. For all its success in embarrassing low-wage employers and raising local wage floors, the campaign and its strikes have not led to more dues-paying union members to financially support the cause. Meanwhile, SEIU has poured millions of dollars into the effort.
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Read more @: Fast-Food Strikes And Protests To Hit Hundreds Of Cities

Keep up the good fight! A long road to go, but keep up the struggle. We are already starting to see some progress come out of this movement and more will come.
 
Fine. You can have your $15 an hour. And by the way, because of the new expense, you're fired and being replaced by an automated ordering device.
 
Roadvirus said:
Fine. You can have your $15 an hour. And by the way, because of the new expense, you're fired and being replaced by an automated ordering device.
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Nah. Paco will be more than glad to take the job. ;)

These low value add workers need to learn that greeting people or flipping burgers isnt a goddamn career.

The market has spoken, their wage is this. Government interference at this point is wrong.
 
Sooooo, what you're saying is today is a good day to have lunch at a fast food place.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Read more @: Fast-Food Strikes And Protests To Hit Hundreds Of Cities

Keep up the good fight! A long road to go, but keep up the struggle. We are already starting to see some progress come out of this movement and more will come. [/FONT][/COLOR]
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Start the firing process and replace the bad employees with hopefully good ones. If these people want more money, maybe they should be looking for jobs in a field other than fast food. Maybe they should take advantage of some of the job training programs that pretty much every state in the Union offers (Employment & Training Administration (ETA) - U.S. Department of Labor). Maybe they should take some free/low cost online courses to improve their skillsets. I know, that requires that people be held accountable for themselves and actually make an effort and that's an anathema to far too many these days.

Now then, lets the whole rehashing the same old tired arguments about MW.... Maybe we could all save ourselves a lot of time and simply go back to the last 42 threads on the subject and just copy/paste everything from them. Or better yet - lets take all the arguments and just number them so that instead of doing all that tedious typing, we can simply refer to them by number.
 
We do realize that there are 94 million people who are no longer looking for work, right? Wages always run low when there are more workers than jobs. But this is Obama's recovery.
 
Luftwaffe said:
Nah. Paco will be more than glad to take the job. ;)

These low value add workers need to learn that greeting people or flipping burgers isnt a goddamn career.

The market has spoken, their wage is this. Government interference at this point is wrong.
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That is the focal point of the problem. Minimum wage jobs were NEVER meant to be careers. The mindset that says they deserve a 'livable wage' for being a fry cook is also the same mindset that says "and my employer should give me vacation days and free healthcare and the government should give me free food stamps and pay my utilities".

In other words...Hillary and Bernie voters.
 
Moon said:
Sooooo, what you're saying is today is a good day to have lunch at a fast food place.
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There is no good day to eat at a fast food place. :2razz:
 
That's right the corporations should pay more to their workers and the government should keep the taxes high on the workers!
 
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I don't think the left understands the issue here.

1) You are honestly telling me that a fast food employee should be making more money than me? I make $14.50 right now and I have a college degree. My job ACTUALLY requires intelligence to do. I have to learn numerous laws and then I have to deal with people and I have to be on a schedule all the time because if I'm not, it is actually detrimental to the company.

So basically why should I be forced on to minimum wage? I'd rather make above it.

2) Why don't you understand the bargaining power here? This is about money. A business wants to maximize profits. Why don't you reward businesses who pay higher rates. Don't shop at the minimum wage stores. And why not have the government incentivize companies who pay higher than minimum wage?
 
tech30528 said:
We do realize that there are 94 million people who are no longer looking for work, right? Wages always run low when there are more workers than jobs. But this is Obama's recovery.
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Like my 87 year old mother. She, like every other person over 16 is included in that 94 mil number. So to imply all 94 mil aren't looking for jobs because of the poor 'recovery', or because wages are low is disingenuous.

But anyway she hasn't looked for a job in 25 years. The Damn slacker.
 
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Lot of hate for working people in this thread by...my guess...by other working people.

Worker cooperatives should be able to solve this problem.
 
VanceMack said:
Minimum wage jobs were NEVER meant to be careers.
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Out of curiosity..... Why? Why are only college level jobs considered "careers"? Why can't someone say "Hey! I want to be a fry cook for my whole life because I consider it fun and worthwhile to provide such a service to people!" What makes you, or anyone else, worthy of deciding what should be and what shouldn't be considered a "career" for anyone but yourself?
 
Roadvirus said:
Fine. You can have your $15 an hour. And by the way, because of the new expense, you're fired and being replaced by an automated ordering device.
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People don't go to restaurants to interact with machines. Don't you see a worker threat when it's patently obvious? We're not cattle going to the trough as much as Mcdonald's would like everyone to think.
 
At first, I thought it was sad to see an auto worker making $12 an hour, and being so close to fast food workers in wages. Then I saw the reactions to this story. That was even more sad.
 
dimensionallava said:
mcdonalnds-in-denmark.png
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Pretty soon the American corp is going to be forced to capitulate: will they send their machines to Iraq and hope that American consumers follow?

:lamo

I would really like for those who agree with the smarter bunch of US to pay VERY[/i] close attention to what's going on. And for those that think WE'RE looney? You're going to learn a very hard lesson.
 
Alyssa T. said:
At first, I thought it was sad to see an auto worker making $12 an hour, and being so close to fast food workers in wages. Then I saw the reactions to this story. That was even more sad.
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Are you saying that you are oppossed to income equality? ;)
 
Alyssa T. said:
At first, I thought it was sad to see an auto worker making $12 an hour, and being so close to fast food workers in wages. Then I saw the reactions to this story. That was even more sad.
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It's the new paradigm. Ronald Reagan and his henchmen set this up: "everybody's gonna be a CEO and your portfolio is the most important thing in your life"...

The very same propaganda program was run just before the great crash of 1929, and guess what happened. The very same program is being run today for the very same reason and has continued to produce the very same results. What's happening is - and please excuse the rudeness... "a stiff prick has no conscious and no sense".

That's the market, and that's why people get ****ed.
 
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