Under the dark cloud of government shutdowns and other conservative-created mayhem shines a silver lining — the recent gains of California’s low-wage workers. Governor Jerry Brown has signed one law raising the state’s minimum wage and another that provides domestic housekeepers, maids and nannies with the right to get overtime pay. These were huge triumphs in a climate of constriction and budget cuts. Such policies will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers, as well as their families and communities.
These legislative victories are only as powerful as the organizing behind them. It was the huge numbers and commitment of thousands of organized workers (unionized or not) raising their voices that made it impossible for lawmakers to ignore their needs.
The exciting part of activating this new swath of workers is that many have historically not hailed from communities associated with trade unionism. Many come from low-income and/or immigrant communities of color.
» Read more about: California Love: Low-Wage Worker Activism »
Labor Day may be over, but if the recent strikes in 60 cities are any indication, fast food workers intend to keep turning up the heat on a vast American industry built around poverty wages. For the first time, this mega-sector that grosses $200 billion a year is under serious scrutiny, as increasingly emboldened employees across the country demand a living wage from immensely profitable corporations sensitive to their public image.
While the focus on fast food workers’ paltry wages is well deserved, there’s another issue that demands attention: the rampant violation of labor laws by fast food giants.
It’s bad enough that 83 percent of workers in this industry earn less than $10.10 an hour — the average fast food cook, for example, makes $9.02 an hour or $18,760 a year — while typically being denied health insurance and other benefits. Adding injury to insult is the fact that fast food chains routinely break a wide range of laws meant to protect these workers.
Of all the commemorations of the March on Washington, the one that will best capture its spirit isn’t really a commemoration at all. Thursday, one day after the 50th anniversary of the great march, fast-food and retail workers in as many as 35 cities will stage a one-day strike demanding higher wages.
Sadly, the connection between the epochal demonstration of 1963 and a fast-food strike in 2013 couldn’t be more direct.
The march 50 years ago was, after all, a march “For Jobs and Freedom,” and its focus was every bit as economic as it was juridical and social. Even more directly, one of the demands highlighted by the march’s leaders and organizers was to raise the federal minimum wage — then $1.15 an hour — to $2. According to Sylvia Allegretto and Steven Pitts of the Economic Policy Institute,