Organizers are calling it the largest protest of underpaid workers ever. Here’s what’s happening from the center of the movement in New York City.
Mariah Summers / BuzzFeed
A union-backed campaign to raise minimum wages across the country has rolled out what is says will be the biggest low-wage worker protest in history, with events planned in 200 cities around the globe.
In New York City, at the heart of the Fight for 15 movement, the action kicked off early, with a group of about about 1,000 construction workers, fast food employees, representatives of the Local 79 union, and their supporters gathering at 6 a.m. in front of a McDonald's in Downtown Brooklyn.
The protest was the first in a series of six planned events in the city, with plans for a "die-in" at a McDonald's store on the Upper West Side, a rally in Columbus Circle, and a student protest at Columbia University.
Standing next to a large group of #BlackLivesMatter representatives wearing sweatshirts that read "I Can't Breathe," Paul Mora chatted with his fellow construction union members, some with hard hats and all clad in brown Local 79 jackets.
"About 200 of us are here," Mora told BuzzFeed News. "We are here to get better jobs for the union, and to get a raise on the minimum wage. It's too low — it should be increased."
Mariah Summers / BuzzFeed
Fight for 15 has grown rapidly since its inception two and a half years ago, when 200 cooks and cashiers left their posts at various fast food restaurants in New York City, demanding at least $15 per hour, as well as the right to organize through labor unions. The demand for such a large wage hike seemed extremely ambitious, but has filtered through activist movements across the country and become something of a calling card for a revitalized form of worker organizing.
In recent months, Seattle and San Francsico have raised their minimum wages to $15 per hour, while New York lags behind, due to budget disagreements in Albany that ultimately struck down a proposal for a $15 minimum wage that Comptroller Scott Stringer argues will bring billions to workers in New York City alone.
"I don't think that these things would be talked about or the policymakers would be involved without the Fight for 15," Tsedeye Gebreselassie, a staff attorney for the National Employment Law Project, told BuzzFeed News on the eve of the April 15 strike. "Tomorrow is expected to be the biggest one yet, and even though a lot of the discussion has been around what they're doing to raise wages, it's just as much a demand for and a conversation around a union and the ability to organize, and to collectively bargain. It will also force a conversation about the disappearance of our middle class."
According the Berlin Rosen, the public relations team retained by Fight for 15, the strike will include tens of thousands of workers organizing in more than 200 cities worldwide throughout the day, and it's not just the fast food sector that the strikers will represent. College students, adjunct professors, home care and child care workers, Walmart employees, #BlackLivesMatter activists, as well as airport services workers will join the fast food constituency to call for a higher minimum wage and for union rights.
The goal is for the movement to first achieve its wage and collective bargaining goals, and then strive for broader quality of life issues, said Mary Kay Henry, president of the 2 million–member Service Employees International Union that has given extensive backing to the protest movement.
"It's growing beyond what we originally thought, and it's being joined by an expansive unit from other industries," Henry told BuzzFeed News. "We need to have the fastest jobs in the economy be good jobs, that people can support themselves on and provide for their families from. We think we have to improve people's lives at the bargaining table, in the streets, and at the ballot box, and continuing to move for change. When we win $15 in the union, that's just the beginning of a greater movement in the country. We think these unions ought to have a seat at the table with these multinational corporations, and we need voting rights for everyone involved."
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment