Detroit Fast Food Workers' Strike Shuts Down Locations

AFL-CIO ^ | 5/10/2013 | Kenneth Quinnell

[mdittmar]

Fast food workers at more than 60 restaurants in Detroit walked off the job Friday. This may be the largest fast food strike in American history, involving more than 400 workers from McDonald's, Long John Silver's, Burger King, Popeyes and KFC. Some locations were forced to shut down. At issue is workers' right to form a union and an increase in base pay to a minimum of $15 per hour.
 

Pastor W.J. Rideout III, a leader in Detroit’s Good Jobs Now coalition, said the organic action was a result of a long history of mistreatment of fast food workers:

“They’ve been wronged in so many ways, it really doesn’t take much coaching to say, hey, we’re going to organize together, we’re going to stand up together,” he said.

“There are 50,000-plus fast food employees in the Detroit metro area…and they’re not even giving them the proper amount of hours,” Rideout said. “At 40 hours a week, they’re making about $15,000 a year, and they’re not even getting 40 hours a week.” Instead, managers hire many employees on an exclusively part-time basis. “Some of them are getting between 15 and 20 hours a week, and that’s barely enough to pay a cellphone bill.”

Reports are coming in that one McDonald's called in replacement workers, some of whom then joined the strike.

The strike in Detroit follows on the heels of similar actions in New York, Pennsylvania, Chicago and St. Louis.

[Alex in chains]

No bagel. No bagel. No bagel.

[Salman]

The quickest way to destroy the “fast food” industry is to make the teenagers who work there a bunch of lazy union thugs. I'm pretty sure this is not teenagers.

[MarkL]

Once a business closes, employees gain special financing and take over the establishment. Almost as if the government ‘gave’ the employees their jobs.

Why not? That strategy works out so well in "Atlas Shrugged."

Mark

[mdittmar]

LOL!

[brityank]

Picked out of the Pennsylvania link above:

Alleging unpaid wages and repeated retaliation, McDonald’s workers in central Pennsylvania launched a surprise strike at 11 this morning. The strikers are student guest workers from Latin America and Asia, brought to the United States under the controversial J-1 cultural exchange visa program. Their employer is one of the thousands of McDonald’s franchisees with whom the company contracts to run its ubiquitous stores.

The egregious Visa Exchange Program strikes again!

Ping for Central PA.

[Fedupwithit]

Wow...can’t wait to see how the dues breakdown goes from an employee making 8 bucks an hour..

[NVDave]

Wait, what?

Wasn’t it the beef of the labor unions that workers were being “exploited” when they were required to work *too many* hours in a week?

So now, companies are letting union workers work so few hours, that they could goof off, smoke dope and fornicate to their hearts’ contentment, and now unions are complaining about that too?

Jeez, there’s no making these clowns happy.

Tell them to work more than one job. That’s what normal people do when they can’t get enough hours in one place.

[Cyber Liberty]

The story doesn’t say when that expires, but the story is from October 2010 so they’re probably not exempt anymore.

[newnhdad]

people still live there?

[stephenjohnbanker]

” Not that long ago, houses were selling for $1 in Detroit and no takers.”

No renters to rent them, and big property taxes.