US fast-food workers strike for a wage they can live on

Fast-food workers protested in dozens of cities across the US in a day of strikes and demonstrations demanding that the national minimum wage be more than doubled.

In Washington DC and New York, where the biggest protests were held, workers marched to blowing whistles and beating drums, chanting slogans such as “We can’t survive on $7.25.”

Outside McDonald’s restaurants, workers held signs saying: “Workers need a ‘McLiving’ wage – not lovin’ it,” mocking the fast-food chain’s advertising slogan.

Workers are pushing for the federal minimum wage to be increased to $15 in the face of opposition from businesses and industry lobby groups that a wage increase would lead to cut jobs.

Right to join unions
Fast-food workers say that they cannot survive on the existing hourly rate of pay as today's minimum wage has not been adjusted to inflation, leaving income levels trailing the cost of living. Protesters also demanded the right to join and establish unions and the ability to strike without retaliation from employers.

The strikes came a day after president Barack Obama renewed his effort to raise the minimum wage, calling the widening gap between the rich and working poor in America the “defining challenge of our time.”

As the roll-out of his healthcare law showed signs of improvement from a catastrophic start, Mr Obama returned to the issue of income inequality, a topic he campaigned on during the 2012 presidential race.

Speaking to a liberal think tank in Washington, the president said that a “dangerous and growing” income gap was jeopardising the belief that if people worked hard, they could get ahead.

He lamented that a child born in the bottom 20 per cent had a less than one-in-20 chance of making it to the top. “We are a better country than this,” he said in a 49-minute speech championing the plight of America’s middle class against entrenched restrictions on upward economic mobility.

The speech did little to reassure federal workers at the McDonald’s outlet in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, who walked out on their jobs to rally.

“While McDonald’s rakes in tonnes of money from its contract with the federal government, I have to walk to work because I can’t even afford the bus fare,” said one of the restaurant’s striking workers, Alexis Vasquez, in a public statement.

“The president says he wants to reduce inequality and create good jobs – he should start by paying the 2 million federally contracted workers like me a decent wage.”

Part-time work
The National Restaurant Association and other industry lobby groups responded to the strikes saying that many of the workers were young and only sought part-time work, not lifetime careers in the trade. The industry had continued to create employment during difficult economic times, the association said.

The demonstrations followed protests by workers at about 1,500 Walmart stores on “Black Friday,” the name given to the day after Thanksgiving, one of the busiest shopping days in the American calendar.

Mr Obama is supporting a Democratic proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, standing behind his second-term pledge made in his state-of-the-union speech in February to tie the federal minimum wage to the cost of living “so that it finally becomes a wage you can live on.”