Fast Food Strike

From The Guardian:

Hundreds of fast food industry workers in New York were due to go on strike on Thursday in the largest such action to ever hit the notoriously low-wage industry.

Organisers behind the protest predict that some 400 workers will walk out or stay away from their jobs across the city in a move aimed at impacting at least 70 restaurants from big chains like McDonalds, Wendy's and Burger King.

The workers are calling for wages of $15 an hour and the right to organise without the threat of retaliation or intimidation. It follows a previous protest in New York last November when 200 workers went on strike.

Jonathan Westin, director of the Fast Food Forward Campaign, said that there was a dire need to raise wages in the fast food industry where many workers put in long hours on minimum wages and thus remained in poverty. There are some 50,000 fast food workers in New York who, organisers say, earn between $10,000 and $18,000 a year – making it difficult to get by in a city known for its sky-high rents and high prices. "They can't pay rent. That is exactly the opposite the chief executives of the companies they work for who earn huge profits," he said.

Westin said this second strike was aimed at building on the momentum of the first protest, which had previously been the largest action to hit the industry. That protest added to an already intense media debate over the rise of a low-wage economy in America as the country's economy struggles to recover.

What's worse, many employers of minimum wage employees are cutting hours to below 30 a week so that they do not have to provide health care.

I have talked to workers at supermarkets who say they are working two jobs now because they can no longer get full-time work at their primary place of employment.

We live in a feudal system with the lords of the manor stealing all the wealth and the chains of debt and high cost of living strangling us.

The Guardian article says fast food workers have been warned by their companies not to take part in the strike or they will be fired.

That workers are going to strike anyway shows just how bad things have gotten for them.