Posted on 09/04/2014 12:24:49 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Dozens of fast food workers have been arrested at protests around the country where they are demanding higher pay at popular restaurants such as McDonald's, Burger King and Domino's.
Fast food workers in New York City, Chicago, Detroit and possibly more cities were arrested for blocking traffic in front of restaurants early Thursday morning, while thousands more continued protesting peacefully, according to news reports.
Backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), fast food workers in 150 cities are walking off the job and picking up picket signs to demand that they be paid no less than $15 per hour. This is the seventh strike organized by the Fast Food Forward campaign since November 2012, when the campaign began. "At Thursday’s strike, fast food restaurants will see firsthand that workers are willing to do whatever it takes to win $15 and union rights,” said Kendall Fells, the organizing director at Fast Food Forward, which receives funding from the SEIU.
The fast food workers started the demonstrations early Thursday morning. At a McDonald's in New York City's Times Square, about 300 people showed up to protest, with reports indicating at least 19 were arrested.
In Detroit, about 200 fast food workers protested outside a McDonald's on the east side of the city with 42 people being arrested, according to reports.
The demonstrations also spread to Chicago, where about 150 fast food workers protested outside a popular Windy City McDonald's with another 23 being arrested.
The fast food workers said earlier this week that some were planning to be arrested during the protests. In many cases, they were arrested for blocking traffic, while people who picketed peacefully were not taken into custody.
The restaurant workers say anything less than $15 an hour is not a livable wage.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
All five McDonald’s in Times Square are independently own franchises DBA McDonald’s. Go ahead. Double the pay roll. Get used to those sidewalks.
Not a bad looking burger!
At the supermarket, I buy burgers, buns, stuff to make my own sauces, bacon for the burgers, eggs for the burgers, sweet potatoes to go with the burgers, gherkins and dill spears, cheeses to top my burgers, not velveeta or brie, onions to caramelize or slice to top the burgers, cole slaw makings, and tea bags to make my own iced tea! And i do NOT have to go and pay $15.00 an hour to some scmuck who hasn’t got the wherewithal, as an electronic technician who is more deserved of that pay rate!
“Whatsat ya say, burger flippers?”
“hahahahahaha!”
I checked the five each in Chicago and Detoit. All locally owned franchises. Just because you work at McDonald’s does not mean you work FOR McDonald’s.
dear Gabrial,
When i traveled through NYC, I went to ‘the automat’ quite a few times, and had delicious meals there.
Thank you for the picture.
True in some instances. And more power to 'em.
Though, I am fairly, nearly 100% certain my check out lady at Walmart the other day was NOT there of her own volition. The scowl, the pure exhaustion on her face...Nor the guy, probably 80, who gave me my receipt at the gas station last week.
Now there is a lady, maybe 70, at In and Out burger up the street who is pretty chipper.
They're even entertaining, if you use Raymond Scott's Powerhouse as a sound track.
Seriously, $15 minimum wage? Why not just make it $100 and be done with it for awhile? Then maybe the middle class could earn more too instead of just minimum wagers getting the raises /s
I will say I have noticed in the past years, that there are almost no kids working behind the counters at McDonalds or any fast food places...
I can tell you at 50 now, and with my 30 year long career of structural drafting now in the 6th year of not being able to find work except barely enough contract labor work to keep afloat... I know I would much rather work in a fast food restaurant than to sit in a cubicle answering phones all day. It seems like these are the two things you can always go find a job doing now though.
I haven’t attended college yet, and I’m making well above minimum wage. I started out doing cleaning and waiting tables... then into customer service... now I have a good job as a receptionist with a local company. You move up. I don’t understand why these people don’t seek to do the same.
As much as I disagree with these protestors, I do think this would be a good time for some of these employers to sit and discuss the basic economic structures within their company TO the employees. Why you make this wage, wages of people within the company, career opportunities, AND maybe how easily they could be replaced with robots!
I bet the robot would give me extra pickles when I ask...
When I was about 8 years old, My Dad took my Brother and I to see the “Blue Max” in NYC. Afterword’s, we went to the Automat and selected some lovely chicken pot pies. The server promptly sat us at a table and dished out the pies onto a plate as my Brother and I shrieked in horror! We liked them whole, ate from the crust down. Dad wanted to smack us! But seeing Ursula Andress take off her shirt was worth the trip.
I’m just wondering what the Unions paid these people to “picket”? Doe anyone really think they got $15 per hour?
Fire them. Somebody else will do the job.
Idiots. Most of them will be replaced by technology.
Bookmark
The SEIU?
Oh great!
Those morons again. They are free to keep recruiting imbeciles to feed their Union coffers for the big cats. And eliminate the entire segment of the economy altogether.
They are free to organize, if the third graders need a job, and are able to obtain it only by intimidation and violence.
Good luck with that.
We have the highest percentage of unemployed in decades.
We also have salaries for educated and experienced workers falling for six years!
That sounds like the perfect environment for additional welfare disguised as social engineering, high paid job for educational third graders, who can get the order right only about 75% of the time (from personal experience!)
Go for it morons.
You might have the best luck in Ferguson MO, though.
How sweet... you're assuming that there's only one father for those 5... Ahhh, to be in that dreamland once again!
I think not.
Oooops! Here comes a major roadblock in the quest for higher wages for fast food workers- AUTOMATION.
http://www.businessinsider.com/momentum-machines-burger-robot-2014-8
Price yourself out of the labor market at your own risk.
Limited skills = limited value
Dear jaz,
It was in the last years of the automat, that i made it there.
Yet, going into NYC to see in “cinerama 3 screen” 2001, A space oddysey, and a meal at Tad’s steak house, was just as rewarding.
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