Workers at Burgerville voted to form a federally recognized union — the first in more than 40 years among fast-food employees nationwide. Now the Wobblies dream of organizing the entire Burgerville chain.
With the help of a new municipal law, a new advocacy group seeks to become an organizing model for low-wage workers.
"This movement is bigger than $15 and a union. This movement shows that no matter what’s going on in America, no matter what it is that we’re fighting for, if you want change for your city, for your community, for your country, we as a people can’t be silent anymore.
After Occupy in 2011, and the wave of fast-food strikes the following year in New York City, the movement to raise wages took a new turn and a bolder stance: $15 an hour and a union. When the campaign first began, that pay demand seemed like a pipe dream. Yet the call for $15 resonated. Now, the movement has scored victories in two of the biggest states in the country.
When fast-food workers started protesting just two years ago for a $15 minimum wage, they were mocked. This week, they secured their biggest victory yet.
The success of the organizing is due to everything from the abysmal recovery from the 2008 economic crisis to Occupy Wall Street's role in shifting the national dialogue from austerity to economic inequality. But Fight for 15 is due primarily to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which initiated the campaign in 2011 and has poured tens of millions of dollars into growing waves of protest that are battering the image of the fast-food giants.
The worst-paid workers in America have been the mainly silent and most extreme victims of the rising inequality and wage stagnation for the past 40 years in America. Their occupations have also been—and are projected to be—the fastest growing part of the workforce.
Poor wages, precarious jobs, absence of benefits, no social security and denial of union rights are the patterns of the global fast food industry which relies on the labor of millions of workers employed by a few giant coporations operating under the names of different brands.
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