Employees at Burger King, Domino’s, McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Wendy’s participated in mini-strikes last Thursday as part of the “Fast Food Forward” campaign that seeks to double the average pay to $15 an hour. The strikes, organized by pro-union group New York Communities for Change, have the ultimate goal of a city-wide union of fast food workers that would cover members across multiple stores and franchises.
The strikes come in the wake of recent walkouts by Walmart store and warehouse employees across the nation.
As the nation’s job market slowly recovers from 2008′s economic downturn, fast food is one of the fastest-growing employment sectors, along with other typically low-paying gigs. According to the National Employment Law Project, 43 percent of job growth in the past two years has come in the restaurant, retail and temp industries.
Doing shift work at McDonald’s has never been considered a professional occupation that could support a family, but for many it may be the only job available. However, 40 hours a week at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour brings in just over $15,000 per year, hardly enough to make ends meet, especially in New York.
Despite the low wages, the traditionally temporary nature of the jobs have stymied any past efforts to unionize. “You’ve got a couple of reasons that I believe they’ve stayed non-union for this long,” John P. Hancock, Jr., a labor and employment attorney for the firm Butzel Long. “They’re very transitional. Up until recently, most people were working there either to get some extra money for Christmas, working through high school and very recently, senior citizens supplementing their income working there.”
