FAST food workers backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in New York, St Louis and Kansas City, Missouri have launched strikes demanding both a wage increase to $15 an hour, from $8.94, and the right to join unions without employer interference.
Later this week, workers in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit and Flint, Michigan, will also go out on strike, expanding the reach of the movement of fast food workers (and, in Chicago, retail workers) that started with protests in New York and Chicago last year and grew into a series of one-day strikes throughout 2013.
In Flint and Kansas City, strikes of SEIU members there are taking place for the first time; in other cities, strikes will expand to target new franchises.
Organisers anticipate that tens of thousands of fast food workers will join in the strikes, which coincide with heightened public awareness of wage stagnation and economic inequality.
Many strikers have said they will stay out for longer than a single day.
The fast food strikes are part of a broader movement by low-wage workers for higher pay and union representation that has grown massively over the past year in America.
Targets include a range of employers, including Wal-Mart, federal subcontractors, warehouses, retail stores and car washes.
Workers have formed local organising committees that, with financial and logistical support from trade unions and community groups are growing into national networks, most prominently OUR Walmart.
This low-wage service and retail worker movement has tapped into a vein of discontent.
But it has also created hopes for change through the fledgling campaign’s remarkable success with imaginative tactics.
SEIU member Terrance Wise, who is a 34-year old fast food worker and father of three in Kansas City said: ‘I’ve always dreamt about a moment like this. But what am I going to do by myself?
‘There’s strength in numbers. It’s a beautiful thing, a positive thing, that’s going to change this country.
‘My job should be a good job.’
Although he works long hours at his two part-time jobs – eight years at Burger King (now for $9.35 an hour) and two years at Pizza Hut (for $7.45) – and his wife also has a low-wage job as a home healthcare aide, Wise struggles to make ends meet.
He recently lost his house after he was unable to make mortgage repayments and had to move in with relatives.
Conditions in the industry are starting to changed as a result of the movement, with workers winning improvements in wages and condition with the fight continuing against employers.
In Chicago, organisers say, workers at some McDonald’s and Macy’s locations received pay increases after the April strike.
International Longeshoreman and Warehouse Union (ILWU) dock worker Andrew Little, 26, said that managers raised pay from $9 to $11.26 an hour for him and his colleagues after they participated in the Chicago strike.
He said: ‘I was honestly shocked. We told ourselves it wouldn’t happen overnight.
‘My first thought was the strike really did have an effect.’
But Little remains focused on his ‘main goal’: strengthen the trade unions.
‘We want both a raise and to sit down with management and talk about how we can better serve the store and the store can better serve us,’ he says.
As happy as he is with his raise, he is especially pleased that no striker was fired or disciplined.
‘That’s the best part,’ he said.
Like other strikers, he returned to work accompanied by supporters – a dozen community representatives, and organisers – who insisted that he should not suffer any retaliation.
Workers have a real fear of being fired, Little says, but that can be prevented ‘if enough of us all stand up and demand respect’.
After strikes in St Louis in May, some workers lost hours, pay, shifts or promised transfers, according to Jobs With Justice leader Reverend Martin Rafanan.
But Jobs With Justice delegations went to the restaurants and talked with managers, corporate representatives or even, in one case, the corporate general counsel.
He said: ‘All of the cases were resolved in favour of the workers.’
There’s is a case of a striker being fired during this year’s wave of fast food job actions: Greg Reynoso, from a Brooklyn Domino’s.
SEIU member and student Rasheen Aldridge a worker at a Jimmy John’s gourmet sandwhich shop, said: ‘I stood up to my bosses when I went on strike last month with hundreds of fast food workers in St Louis.
‘I’m not standing alone. Thousands of workers across the country, our neighbours, our churches and now members of Congress are standing with me.
‘We all want higher wages and the right to organise without interference. I want more hours so that my paycheck covers more than gas to get back and forth to work and I can finish college.’
Fast Food Forward, the New York branch of the movement, responded by making Reynoso’s employer the first target of the current strike.
Last Friday, organisers reported, 14 of 15 Domino’s delivery drivers did not show for work, effectively shutting down the operation on its busiest night.
Meanwhile, roughly 60 supporters, gathered outside the Domino’s to protest Reynoso’s dismissal.
The actions come at a time when issues of inequality and the minimum wage have taken the national stage.
President Obama is on tour during which he has spoken about economic inequality and claimed that he wants to raise the minimum wage.
A Hart Research poll shows that 80 per cent of the public supports the proposal to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.35 to $10.10 in three steps.
Fast food workers’ poverty wages were spotlighted last week when workers showed that McDonald’s does not pay.
McDonald’s told fast food workers that they should have at least two jobs to live, and included nothing for heating and far less for health insurance in the cheapest McDonald’s plan, meaning that workers who are supposed to get health insurance cannot afford to pay for it.
