Free Republic

(MoneyWatch) Employees of fast food restaurants are striking in cities around the country, bolstered by support from labor unions, churches, and other groups, demanding $15 an hour wages and a greater ability to unionize. Many consumers have complained that the expectations are unreasonable, given the type of work and the skills and drive they assume must be lacking in the workers.

Last week, the SEIU helped organize employee walk-outs at fast food restaurants in seven major cities, with the promise that more would follow in the future. The strikers demanded a $15 minimum wage, which represents a greater than 100 percent increase over the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Today, many stores are also turning to robots to do the jobs that employees would otherwise do. This isn’t science fiction: San Francisco-based Momentum Machines recently announced a new robotic burger-flipper that does the work equivalent of three full-time kitchen employees. That’s 360 burgers per hour—and there’s no SEIU to organize a...

NEW YORK (AP) — Fast-food customers in search of burgers and fries on Thursday might run into striking workers instead. Organizers say thousands of fast-food workers are set to stage walkouts in dozens of cities around the country, part of a push to get chains such as McDonald's, Taco Bell and Wendy's to pay workers higher wages. It's expected be the largest nationwide strike by fast-food workers, according to organizers. The biggest effort so far was over the summer when about 2,200 of the nation's millions of fast-food workers staged a one-day strike in seven cities. Thursday's planned walkouts follow...

On August 29th, the day after the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, fast-food workers around the nation are planning to strike for better pay and working conditions. Workers going on strike are demanding $15 an hour wages, mirroring the demand for $2 an hour the organizers of the 1963 march made.