Fast-food strikes widen into social-justice movement

Source: USA Today

Bruce Horovitz

Organizers are calling it the largest-ever mobilization of U.S. workers seeking higher pay.

That's yet to be determined. But what began on Tuesday with several low-wage worker protests and marches in Boston and Detroit expanded nationwide on Wednesday beginning shortly after 6 a.m. at a McDonald's in New York City, where hundreds of fast-food workers and sympathizers blocked traffic near the main artery to the Brooklyn Bridge. Protesters listened to speeches and unfurled a giant banner demanding $15 an hour.

Wednesday's activity is projected by organizers to evolve over the course of Tax Day into a 230-city protest and strike, not only by fast-food workers, but also by everything from adjunct professors to home care employees to child care workers to Walmart workers.

"It's something different," says Kendall Fells, organizing director of Fight for $15, which is funded by the Service Employees International Union. "This is much more of an economic and racial justice movement than the fast-food workers strikes of the past two years."

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Fast-food strikers protest at McDonald's on Livernois Street in northwest Detroit on April 14.
(Photo: Fight for $15)

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/04/15/fast-food-strike-fight-for-15-service-employees-international-union/25787045/