Fast-food workers plan nationwide strike Friday
Biden administration faces clamor for $15-an-hour minimum wage
Fast-food workers across the country are planning to strike Friday to keep pressure on the incoming Biden administration and the restaurant giants they work for to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Employees of McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other fast-food chains will stay away or walk off the job in roughly 15 cities on what would have been Martin
Luther King Jr.’s 92nd birthday, said Fight for $15 and a Union, a movement of fast food and other low-paid workers, which is organizing the strike.
“They want to send a message to both the Biden-Harris administration and Congress to prioritize passing $15 an hour (legislation) in the first 100 days,” said Allynn Umel, organizing director of Fight for $15 and a Union, which has staged walkouts across the country since 2012 and is backed by the Service Employees International
Union.
The federal minimum wage of $7.25 hasn’t budged since 2009 with Senate Republicans stalling efforts to raise it.
President-elect Joe Biden, who has made a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour a key goal, has said he’s hopeful legislation can be enacted now that Democrats will control both chambers of Congress.
The worker strike, which will include
car caravans and strike lines staged on Zoom, is meant to push Biden to make good on his pledge.
“It’s good to hear” the commitment of the incoming administration, said Terrence Wise, 41, a McDonald’s worker and leader in Fight for $15 and a Union. “But we still need to keep the pressure on and make sure they follow through.’’
Wages are on the rise
This year, a record-high number of jurisdictions, 24 states and 50 cities and counties, will raise their lowest wages, according to the National Employment Law Project.
Many are aiming for $15 an hour, if not immediately, then in the next few years.
Some employer groups have said a $15 pay floor will harm small businesses already put in jeopardy by the pandemic. And a 2019 Congressional Budget Office study found that while a $15 federal minimum wage would boost pay for 17 million workers who earn less than that and potentially another 10 million more who earn a bit more, it would cause 1.3 million other workers to lose their jobs based on the study’s median estimate.
Still, “momentum is on the side of workers who’ve been calling for this over the course of the last eight years,” Umel said.
A wage increase will be particularly critical to help Black and brown workers whose physical and financial health have been especially hard hit by the COVID-19 crisis, Umel added.
“Raising the minimum wage is one of the most powerful tools Black and brown workers have to really close the Black and brown wage gap and rebuild our communities in the wake of the pandemic,” she said.
Wise, who has worked for McDonald’s for the past nine years and is a department manager in Kansas City, Missouri, said a $15 an hour wage can be “the difference between literally life and death for some workers. I’ve seen workers who’ve been homeless because they don’t make a living wage.”
Wise, who currently makes $14 an hour, said he and his family have struggled as well. “There have been nights where we’ve had to send our little girls to bed without food,” he said. “This is what $15 an hour means not only to my family but to families across the country, to not juggle bills, to keep a roof over your head.”