http://themilitant.com/2015/7941/794101.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 41 November 16, 2015
(front page)
‘We need $15 an hour,
full-time work, a union’
Nationwide protests set for Nov. 10
Militant/Tony Lane
JetBlue contract workers at New York’s JFK airport protest Oct. 29
against low wages and unsafe conditions. Sign in Spanish reads,
“Fast-food workers, we say your fight is our fight.”
BY MAGGIE TROWE
As fast-food and other low-wage workers are planning for and publicizing
what is shaping up to be the broadest national day of action for $15 an
hour and a union Nov. 10, they are also defending fellow workers fired
in retaliation for building the struggle.
Sandra Roman, who is active in Fight for $15, was fired from her job at
a McDonald’s in Oakland, California, Oct. 28, ostensibly for “calling in
sick too frequently.” The Service Employees International Union, the
East Bay Organizing Committee, co-workers and others mobilized that
night at the restaurant. The owner shut down the 24-hour establishment,
trying to stop the protest and delay action by city officials.
The City of Oakland is involved because the firing violated a
retaliation clause in the city’s new minimum wage ordinance. It raised
the city minimum wage from $9 to $12.25 per hour and required employers
to provide paid sick leave.
Another protest was held the next day. In a meeting with Roman and SEIU
representatives Oct. 30, McDonald’s management reinstated her.
Shonda Roberts joined the Oct. 29 rally to support Roman. Roberts, also
active in building the Nov. 10 actions, has reason to feel confident.
She was reinstated at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Oakland
Oct. 25 after protests against a similar retaliatory firing.
The bonds between the fight for $15 and protests against police
brutality continue to deepen. In Chicago one of the Nov. 10 protests
will gather at a McDonald’s a few blocks from the police station where
monthly protests have demanded the firing of police officer Dante
Servin, who killed 22-year-old African-American Rekia Boyd in 2012.
Protesters will march from the restaurant to the police station.
Quinnisha Allen, 21, who works at a South Side McDonald’s, told the
Militant there will be strikes and protests at several of the fast-food
giant’s outlets around the city, followed by a 4:30 p.m. rally at
Thompson Center downtown.
Allen was fired from another McDonald’s last year “for drinking a
lemonade while I was waiting for my food during lunch,” she said. “The
manager claimed I didn’t pay for the drink. When I went back with four
Fight for $15 members, she refused to talk with me and called the police.”
Activities in New York Nov. 10 include an early morning action at a
McDonald’s in Brooklyn, a midday rally at the Adam Clayton Powell State
Office Building in Harlem and a 4 p.m. demonstration at Foley Square
downtown. There will also be protests in Albany, Buffalo, Corning,
Newfane, Poughkeepsie and Troy, New York, and in Jersey City, Perth
Amboy and Neptune City, New Jersey.
Two vanloads of Fight for $15 Now workers joined airport workers,
members of SEIU Local 32BJ, and others at a rally of 100 people at JFK
International Airport Oct. 29, a run-up action to Nov. 10. Workers at
JetBlue subcontractors Roma and Ultimate Aircraft were protesting low
wages, inadequate protective equipment and bedbugs in the vans that take
them out to the planes.
‘Nov. 10 is going to be big’
“We need $15 and a union now, not in a few years,” Jorel Ware, a
McDonald’s worker and Fight for $15 organizer, told the Militant. “We
got $15 in New York, but it’s not complete until 2018 in the city and
2021 in the state.” The raise applies to some 200,000 fast-food workers.
“We have Black Lives Matter groups, airport and home care workers and
university adjuncts joining us, hundreds of organizations,” Ware said.
“Nov. 10 is going to be big.”
There are several hundred workers at the 24-hour McDonald’s near Times
Square where he works. “The managers talk down to us, tell us to hurry
up, say if we eat a french fry we’ll be fired,” he said. “And I have a
burn scar above my eyebrow from opening the apple turnover oven.”
In response to the broadening fight for higher wages, many capitalist
spokespeople are waging a countercampaign and revealing their contempt
for working people.
An American Enterprise Institute article in May, titled “Warren Buffett
Explains — Simply and Clearly — Why a $15 Minimum Wage is Bad for
Workers,” quotes the multibillionaire owner of railroads, mines and
insurance companies claiming higher wages would “reduce employment.”
“A $15-Hour Minimum Wage Could Harm America’s Poorest Workers,” was the
title of a July 30 article in Fortune magazine, warning that
unemployment will rise because “employers will be very reluctant to pay
high wages to workers whose skills — including the ability to speak
English, in the case of many immigrants — are so modest.”
Capitalists denigrate workers as part of obfuscating the fact that their
wealth comes solely from the exploitation of wage labor. “Low-wage
workers” are workers who haven’t yet won higher wages, not ignorant
subhuman creatures who don’t merit enough to live on. The $4.8 billion
profit McDonald’s bosses raked in last year came from the value created
by the workers who cook and serve the food. Winning pay raises will cut
into that profit, not raise prices.
The union-in-becoming of fast-food workers is gaining experience and
confidence — and inspiring others.
Tony Lane in New York; Carole Lesnick in Oakland, California; and Alyson
Kennedy in Chicago contributed to this article.
Related articles:
Seattle forum: Workers discuss $15, union organizing battles
On the Picket Line
New Chrysler contract maintains lower-paid tiers
Stakes high for all workers in Lac-Mégantic frame-up
During class combat rebellious workers become revolutionists
All out Nov. 10 for $15 and a union!
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