Fast-food workers demand minimum $15 wage

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Fast-food workers demand minimum $15 wage

Fast-food, low-wage workers march across US in 'fight for $15'

Date April 17, 2015 - 1:26AM
Alejandra Cancino

Protestors pause near a McDonald's restaurant in Times Square during a rally in New York on Wednesday. Photo: AP

Chicago: The battle for a fair minimum wage is heating up in the US, with nationwide protests organised to push for an increase in the hourly minimum to $US15 ($19.30). Demonstrators in Chicago carried signs reading: "Poverty jobs hold Chicago back" and "Lucha por $15," Spanish for "Fight for $15".

Fast-food workers were joined by adjunct professors, home care, childcare, airport, industrial laundry and Wal-Mart workers in the 'Fight for $15' campaign. Organisers called the effort the "most widespread mobilisation ever by US workers seeking higher pay".

About 1000 low-wage workers joined in marches in Connecticut, while smaller protests took place in Chicago and San Francisco's Bay area. In total, organisers expected to bring together 60,000 protesters in major cities across America and in more than 40 countries, as well as at more than 170 college campuses.

Hotel, retail, airport, laundry and other low-wage workers joined their fast-food colleagues in Manhattan. Photo: New York Times

Hotel, retail, airport, laundry and other low-wage workers joined their fast-food colleagues in Manhattan.

"People all over the country are supporting us," Douglas Hunter, a McDonald's worker, said outside a McDonald's on Chicago's West Side. "We will win together".

The protest comes hard on the heels of the news that Dan Price, founder of Gravity Payments, a Seattle credit-card processing firm, had told the firm's workers their minimum wage would be raised to $US70,000 a year, or $US33.65 an hour - for everyone, even low-paid clerks. Mr Price was moved by research showing that money does buy increased happiness as wages rise to about $US75,000 a year. After that, the impact of money is minor.

Fast-food workers held rallies in 236 US cities on Wednesday in their biggest protest yet for higher pay and union rights. Photo: Bloomberg

Maria Elena Rodriguez said she has worked at a McDonald's in downtown Chicago for 18 years and makes $US9.15 per hour. She said her hours have been cut in the past two months from four or five days a week to just one day a week. She's behind on her mortgage payments and her husband, who is retired, had to pick up a part-time job. "We are going to win", she said in her native Spanish.

"This is not just a McDonald's problem," said Alex Alvarez, a Brink's Co employee in Hartford, Connecticut. "It's a problem nationwide".

Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer