Fast food nation: Workers stage nationwide protests

by Bruce Kennedy

12-4-2014

Fast food workers have walked off their jobs and are protesting in the streets of American cities Thursday, as part of demonstrations demanding their industry's minimum wage be raised to at least $15 an hour, and that they be allowed to unionize.

The "Fight for $15" campaign began two Thanksgivings ago with a strike by several hundred fast food workers in New York City. Since then, the demonstrations have taken place every several months, and the campaign for a higher minimum wage has expanded. Organizers say they expect strikes in 190 U.S. cities on Thursday.

The Fight for $15 Twitter account showed images from demonstrations underway early Thursday in Chicago, Indianapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Knoxville, Tennessee and other cities. Protests are also expected elsewhere in the Midwest and along the West Coast as the day progresses.

"The Fight for $15 movement is growing as more Americans living on the brink decide to stick together to fight for better pay and an economy that works for all of us, not just the wealthy few," Mary Kay Henry, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a union that's backing the protests, said in a statement on Thursday.

Henry noted that airport and home care workers would also take part in the walk-outs.

The fast food industry, meanwhile, has questioned the validity of the demonstrations. "National labor groups and their allies have spent millions of dollars on a coordinated campaign to paint an inaccurate and unfair portrait of America's restaurants," the National Restaurant Association said in a press statement. "The union-led demonstrations are orchestrated PR events designed to push their own agenda while attacking an industry that provides opportunity to millions of Americans."

"Organizers have admitted that a $15 level was arbitrarily decided and that they are well aware of the industry's narrow profit margins," the statement continued, "that the demonstrations are really just pressure tactics to force restaurants to capitulate on union-organizing demands."

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