By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 11 years ago

Support the striking fast-food workers in New York City

fast food workers striking
Photo via Sarah Jaffe.

Fast-food workers at dozens of chains in NYC are walking out today in what is the first step in the “biggest effort to unionize fast-food workers ever undertaken in the United States.” They are demanding a raise from near-minimum wages to $15 an hour and the right to form a union. The walk-out–which includes McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Domino’s, Taco Bell and others–is the first-ever multi-restaurant strike by fast-food workers in the country.

The median hourly wage for food service and prep workers is a $8.90 an hour in NYC. And it’s not like these workers are just teenagers hoping for some extra cash; the median age is over 28. Women make up two-thirds of the industry, and tend to be even older. (So, yet again, it’s lots of women and their families getting screwed over in low-wage jobs with few labor protections.)

“They’re not paying us enough to survive,” said one McDonald’s worker who makes $8.75 an hour and works two other jobs as well. And if you’ve ever lived in NYC, you’ll have no at all trouble believing that.

Support the workers by signing the petition here.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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