Fast-food workers plan strikes in 100 US cities this week

[ckaihatsu]

[LaborTech] Fast-food workers plan strikes in 100 US cities this week


Wage Strikes Planned at Fast-Food Outlets

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: December 1, 2013

Seeking to increase pressure on McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other fast-food restaurants, organizers of a movement demanding a $15-an-hour wage for fast-food workers say they will sponsor one-day strikes in 100 cities on Thursday and protest activities in 100 additional cities.

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Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

Protesters outside a Taco Bell in Warren, Mich., in July. Many fast-food restaurant workers say they earn too little to live on.

Related

Life on $7.25 an Hour(December 1, 2013)

As the movement struggles to find pressure points in its quest for substantially higher wages for workers, organizers said strikes were planned for the first time in cities like Charleston, S.C.; Providence, R.I.; and Pittsburgh.

The protests have expanded greatly since November 2012, when 200 fast-food workers engaged in a one-day strike at more than 20 restaurants in New York City, the first such walkout in the history of the nation’s fast-food industry.

“There’s been pretty huge growth in one year,” said Kendall Fells, one of the movement’s main organizers. “People understand that a one-day strike is not going to get them there. They understand that this needs to continue to grow.”

The movement, which includes the groups Fast Food Forward and Fight for 15, is part of a growing union-backed effort by low-paid workers — including many Walmart workers and workers for federal contractors — that seeks to focus attention on what the groups say are inadequate wages.

The fast-food effort is backed by the Service Employees International Union and is also demanding that restaurants allow workers to unionize without the threat of retaliation.

Officials with the National Restaurant Association have said the one-day strikes are publicity stunts. They warn that increasing pay to $15 an hour when the federal minimum wage is $7.25 would cause restaurants to rely more on automation and hire fewer workers.

Industry officials say that only a small percentage of fast-food jobs pay the minimum wage and that those are largely entry-level jobs for workers under 25.

Backers of the movement for higher pay point to studies saying that the average age of fast-food workers is 29 and that more than one-fourth are parents raising children.

Simon Rojas, who earns $8.07 an hour working at a McDonald’s in South Central Los Angeles, said he would join Thursday’s one-day strike.

“It’s very difficult to live off $8.07 an hour,” said Mr. Rojas, 23, noting that he is often assigned just 20 or 25 hours of work a week. “I have to live with my parents. I would like to be able to afford a car and an apartment.”

Mr. Rojas said he had studied for a pharmacy technician’s certificate, but he had been unable to save the $100 needed to apply for a license.

On Aug. 29, fast-food strikes took place in more than 50 cities. This week’s expanded protests will be joined by numerous community, faith and student groups, including USAction and United Students against Sweatshops.

[blake 3:17]

For an event near you: http://events.lowpayisnotok.org/

[Klaatu]

Is there such a thing as a Food Workers Union? Many grocery stores in the Northern USA have long been unionized, under The AFL-CIO.
It would be great if the fast-food workers organized. I think this will happen soon, but it will not happen without a fight. Anti-union organizations are spending literally billions of $ to prevent this... money that could just be put to better use paying workers a living wage! (WTF?)

[ckaihatsu]

BBC News - Fast food workers in US pay protest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_085HcXmFA


Fast Food Protests in Demand of Higher Wages Planned in 100 Cities

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJKaV_lSnFE


Fast Food Protests in Push for Wage Hikes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwtPzjx1vPA

[blake 3:17]

Is there such a thing as a Food Workers Union? Many grocery stores in the Northern USA have long been unionized, under The AFL-CIO.
It would be great if the fast-food workers organized. I think this will happen soon, but it will not happen without a fight. Anti-union organizations are spending literally billions of $ to prevent this... money that could just be put to better use paying workers a living wage! (WTF?)

Restaurants, in general, have been very very difficult to organize. There are a some here, not many, that are unionized but they're mostly part of hotels. You get a bit of class struggle action in hotels, because even a small picket can hurt the employer dearly. People travelling for business or pleasure don't like their trips disrupted! & because unions and other progressive groups often use them for conventions that's a big bargaining chip.

One of the last really good talks I heard here from a left labour activist was on strategies for service workers. In some cases normal unionization with a collective agreement doesn't make too much sense because of staff turnover and small units, though it's not something to oppose in principle. They were suggesting that some kind of looser voluntary association could be more effective in taking up certain fights.

And the main union in US and Canada in the field is UFCW http://www.ufcw.org/ http://www.ufcw.ca/ It's up & down in terms of effectiveness and politics.

[IBleedRed]

I hate the rhetoric surrounding the struggle for the $15 wage that often comes from people who are barely better off. I was talking to somebody who called himself "Middle Class" (the guy earns little more than $30K a year) and was absolutely indignant that "burger flippers" wanted such a huge pay raise. He said he would feel cheated if they got a pay raise while his wage was "earned" through years of "hard work". I wasn't sure how to respond to this. Thoughts?

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1X9W9Q8XE

[ckaihatsu]

I hate the rhetoric surrounding the struggle for the $15 wage that often comes from people who are barely better off. I was talking to somebody who called himself "Middle Class" (the guy earns little more than $30K a year) and was absolutely indignant that "burger flippers" wanted such a huge pay raise. He said he would feel cheated if they got a pay raise while his wage was "earned" through years of "hard work". I wasn't sure how to respond to this. Thoughts?


Yeah, it's a false dichotomy, based on a zero-sum assumption -- as though *he* would somehow get a delivery into his pocket of the increased wages not-paid to fast food workers, if their wages were not increased.

He's under the impression that it's a laissez-faire labor market out there, where individual workers in all industries "compete" with each other on a wages basis, for an overall "fixed" pie of wages from all employers.

This misconception is only encouraged with the bullshit rhetoric coming from the bosses on this -- they're acting "neutral", as though any increased labor costs would *have* to be passed along to the consumer (instead of coming out of profits, executive salaries, bonuses, etc.)

[ckaihatsu]

Tampa Workers Outsmart Ronald McDonald’s Police

Single mom India Lewis demands Burger King job back


By Dustin Ponder

http://www.fightbacknews.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-lead-photo/1425742_10104476468333391_815184695_n.jpg

Tampa, FL - Striking workers from Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, and other fast food restaurants joined supporters for a militant march and protest in Tampa, FL. This day of action is part of the Fight For 15 campaign, a national action movement of low-wage workers against corporate giants like McDonalds, Burger King, and Taco Bell. These big fast food corporations make billions in profits by exploiting their workers. The national day of action saw thousands of workers across the country walkout over unfair labor practices, demanding an end to retaliation and harassment for organizing, as well as demanding a $15 wage, and union representation.

On Thursday, December 5, the day started when an entire shift of Dunkin Donuts workers shutdown their store with a 6:00 AM walkout over harassment and retaliation from management. Later, more strikers and supporters joined, including India Lewis, a 19-year-old single mother, illegally fired from Burger King. Lewis was fired for talking with her co-workers about organizing for better conditions and respect on the job. The crowd swelled to over 100 protesters picketing along a string of restaurants, including KFC and IHOP, and then marching on McDonald's chanting “15 and a union!” & “Hold the burgers, hold the fries, make our wages supersized!”

The protest was met at McDonald’s by dozens of police standing side-by-side with a string of corporate managers. The bosses and police were trying to prevent the striking workers from entering the store and talking with McDonald’s workers. The managers even went so far as to lock the doors of the store, trapping customers and workers inside the store. When workers went to lead the protest back to the KFC, the police vacated the McDonald’s parking lot to head off the protest. The militant workers and strikers sensed an opportunity and lead the protest back to shutdown the McDonald’s drive-thru.

The protest included workers from OUR Walmart who use similar tactics to strike Walmart in efforts to fight for better conditions. The recent strike wave is part of a broader movement to revive the strike and embrace militant tactics to fight against exploitation by the 1%. Organizers in Tampa plan to continue organizing future strikes, as well as actions to demand Justice for India Lewis, pushing Burger King to reinstate her.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]






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[IBleedRed]

Yeah, it's a false dichotomy, based on a zero-sum assumption -- as though *he* would somehow get a delivery into his pocket of the increased wages not-paid to fast food workers, if their wages were not increased.

He's under the impression that it's a laissez-faire labor market out there, where individual workers in all industries "compete" with each other on a wages basis, for an overall "fixed" pie of wages from all employers.

This misconception is only encouraged with the bullshit rhetoric coming from the bosses on this -- they're acting "neutral", as though any increased labor costs would *have* to be passed along to the consumer (instead of coming out of profits, executive salaries, bonuses, etc.)

It's just so discouraging and infuriating that working-class people are actually opposing the movement for better wages and fairer treatment. I don't expect the capitalists to care: they are our enemies. They know that, we know that. But I don't understand why working-class people are so quick to attack other working-class people for wanting more of the wealth they produce.

[Ritzy Cat]

Mr. Rojas said he had studied for a pharmacy technician’s certificate, but he had been unable to save the $100 needed to apply for a license.

This is another example of how capitalism fails to ensure that capable workers are not able to contribute in their own way. . . .

[ckaihatsu]

It's just so discouraging and infuriating that working-class people are actually opposing the movement for better wages and fairer treatment. I don't expect the capitalists to care: they are our enemies. They know that, we know that. But I don't understand why working-class people are so quick to attack other working-class people for wanting more of the wealth they produce.


False consciousness is term used by some Marxists for the way in which material, ideological and institutional processes in capitalist society mislead members of the proletariat. These processes are said to hide the true relations of forces between classes and the real state of affairs regarding the development of pre-socialist society (relative to the secular development of human society in general).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness

[A Revolutionary Tool]

I hate the rhetoric surrounding the struggle for the $15 wage that often comes from people who are barely better off. I was talking to somebody who called himself "Middle Class" (the guy earns little more than $30K a year) and was absolutely indignant that "burger flippers" wanted such a huge pay raise. He said he would feel cheated if they got a pay raise while his wage was "earned" through years of "hard work". I wasn't sure how to respond to this. Thoughts?

Maybe that their wages were earned through hard work too. Explain to him to what degree fast-food workers(or any workers for that matter) are exploited. For example when I worked at McDonald's the managers at the end of every hour would check how much of the hours money made went to paying for everybody's wages with the goal to be that labor costs accounted for only, at MOST, 20%. If it was higher than that workers were supposed to be sent home for the day. Now just do some math. When I would work lunch shift the goal was to reach at least $1,000/per hour(As if it depended on our work instead of upon how many people came through and how much they spent pfft). That's the busiest part of the day so we had around 10-12 people working there including the managers. So it's $8/hour for the crew members and there's probably 8-9 of them with 2-3 managers making $8.90/hour and the store manager making like $20/hour(not even shitting you). 9 crew members X $8 each per that hour= $72 out of the $1,000 made going to them. That means out of all that hard work your average crew member did collectively(In California where the minimum wage is $8) during the busiest most stressful hours they're getting a small 7.2% of it collectively(72/1000=0.072, carry the decimal over twice and that's percentage) and individually for all that hard work, all that sweat and stress of getting constantly yelled at to hurry up, your $8 makes up a minuscule %0.8(8/1000=0.008) of the money going to you. That's not even 1% of the total amount of the money made OFF OF YOUR LABOR for that hour. But I'm supposed to work my ass off sweating on that grill, make 4 Big Macs in a matter of a few seconds, etc, so that at the end of the hour when I'm exhausted I'll almost get 1% of the total value created that hour! Oh fun, here comes hour two, I wonder how much of a percentage I'll get off that!

If you were to be getting paid $15/hour you would be getting 1.5% in those conditions which is still barely a pittance, but at least after being degraded at work by your managers and some dickheaded customers you'd be able to live slightly better.

[IBleedRed]

Maybe that their wages were earned through hard work too. Explain to him to what degree fast-food workers(or any workers for that matter) are exploited. For example when I worked at McDonald's the managers at the end of every hour would check how much of the hours money made went to paying for everybody's wages with the goal to be that labor costs accounted for only, at MOST, 20%. If it was higher than that workers were supposed to be sent home for the day. Now just do some math. When I would work lunch shift the goal was to reach at least $1,000/per hour(As if it depended on our work instead of upon how many people came through and how much they spent pfft). That's the busiest part of the day so we had around 10-12 people working there including the managers. So it's $8/hour for the crew members and there's probably 8-9 of them with 2-3 managers making $8.90/hour and the store manager making like $20/hour(not even shitting you). 9 crew members X $8 each per that hour= $72 out of the $1,000 made going to them. That means out of all that hard work your average crew member did collectively(In California where the minimum wage is $8) during the busiest most stressful hours they're getting a small 7.2% of it collectively(72/1000=0.072, carry the decimal over twice and that's percentage) and individually for all that hard work, all that sweat and stress of getting constantly yelled at to hurry up, your $8 makes up a minuscule %0.8(8/1000=0.008) of the money going to you. That's not even 1% of the total amount of the money made OFF OF YOUR LABOR for that hour. But I'm supposed to work my ass off sweating on that grill, make 4 Big Macs in a matter of a few seconds, etc, so that at the end of the hour when I'm exhausted I'll almost get 1% of the total value created that hour! Oh fun, here comes hour two, I wonder how much of a percentage I'll get off that!

If you were to be getting paid $15/hour you would be getting 1.5% in those conditions which is still barely a pittance, but at least after being degraded at work by your managers and some dickheaded customers you'd be able to live slightly better.

Was that $1,000 an hour in revenue or net income? Either way, thanks for the input!

[Klaatu]

Rich people disparaging poor workers earning minimum wage... Do they not receive pay raises themselves? Oh yeah, I almost forgot, they're the "job creators."

Paraphrasing Robert Reich (who put it bluntly): "Conservatives think that the poor need LESS money to get incentives to work, (lowering their unemployment benefits, etc) while rich people need MORE money to "create" jobs for them? (tax breaks, etc)"

WOW now that's a real whopper. :rolleyes:

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Was that $1,000 an hour in revenue or net income? Either way, thanks for the input!

That's revenue from all the sales that hour.

[IBleedRed]

That's revenue from all the sales that hour.
Gotcha. I would be very interested in what the net income is per hour per employee. If anybody has some useful links to labor and wage statistics of that sort, I'd be grateful:grin:

$1,000 in revenue per hour does not necessarily demonstrate the extent to which employees are being cheated out of their production, since most of that revenue might be eaten up by fixed capital costs, supplies, et cetera

[Jimmie Higgins]

I hate the rhetoric surrounding the struggle for the $15 wage that often comes from people who are barely better off. I was talking to somebody who called himself "Middle Class" (the guy earns little more than $30K a year) and was absolutely indignant that "burger flippers" wanted such a huge pay raise. He said he would feel cheated if they got a pay raise while his wage was "earned" through years of "hard work". I wasn't sure how to respond to this. Thoughts?part of how workers have been made to settle for less and lower expectations is because you can not really survive in urban areas on minimum wage. This creates a downward pressure on wages and benefits and so if Walmart pays people crap while making them work harder, then target does, Safeway tries, and fast food too. To oversimplify: a rising tide raises all boats.

Edit: also I think one of the general effects of neoliberalism on consciousness has been a sort of bitterness among workers due to the increased completion. This has allowed the ruling class to more effectively divide people: low wage workers can be won to blaming and resenting the benifits and higher wages of unionized workers, unionized or just better paid workers can be won to a sort of defensive resentment of lower paid workers etc.

To me this suggests that our tactics need to try and break through this atomization and try and focus on broader class wide aspects of these various struggles. I think the fast food and fight for fifteen things have a lot of potential in a similar, but more modest at this point, way that things like fighting for an 8 hour day did in the past. The "lazy" minimum wage worker trope you bring up is very real and too common and I think might have prevented a movement around this from developing before the recession, but now I think there is more potential and a lot of myths about the ease of mobility in the u.s. Have been shaken. It will still be a hard fight, (including pressuring the unions and NGOs involved to prevent these efforts from being sold short or abandoned when democrats try and offer passive lesser minimum wage increases) but in a way hard fights are necessary for u.s. Workers to begin to rebuild some more self-reliant militancy.

[Jimmie Higgins]

One of the last really good talks I heard here from a left labour activist was on strategies for service workers. In some cases normal unionization with a collective agreement doesn't make too much sense because of staff turnover and small units, though it's not something to oppose in principle. They were suggesting that some kind of looser voluntary association could be more effective in taking up certain fights.

Do you have any links or know some good sources for discussion of this? This is something I've been trying to get more involved in locally and I'd be interested.

There's a lot of enthusiasm at the grassroots about these campaigns, though it's still modest and divided here organizationally.

[blake 3:17]

Do you have any links or know some good sources for discussion of this? This is something I've been trying to get more involved in locally and I'd be interested.

There's a lot of enthusiasm at the grassroots about these campaigns, though it's still modest and divided here organizationally.

I'm not seeing in much detail. The one thing that does stand out -- and in thinking about a few successful campaigns here -- has been the presence of a Left both in the workplace, a relevant union and in the community. I'll do a bit more digging...

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euTTJqJ9dxI

[GiantMonkeyMan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euTTJqJ9dxI
The bit at the end of that about the new jobs being 'created', that supposedly show the level of unemployment dropping, almost entirely being in the retail or fast-food sectors is true in the UK as well as probably across the western world. It's a little inspiring to see US workers strike for higher wages in similar jobs to the one I'm currently in. Hopefully some momentum can be drawn from this to encourage workers to begin more militant organising.