Fast Food Workers Gear Up for Nationwide Strike for $15

PERI co-director Robert Pollin says the living-wage movement is building momentum as hundreds of thousands are expected to rally on Wednesday - April 14, 2015



Bio

Robert Pollin is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the founding co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). His research centers on macroeconomics, conditions for low-wage workers in the US and globally, the analysis of financial markets, and the economics of building a clean-energy economy in the US. His latest book is Back to Full Employment. Other books include A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States and Contours of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity.

Transcript

snip*JAY: So just to remind everyone, Bob is co-founder and co-director of the PERI Institute there, and one of the things the PERI Institute has been working on a great deal is the issue of minimum wage. So what's new on that front, Bob?

POLLIN: Well, there's a big action that's going to take place the middle of next week, April 15th, in which the movement, the Fight for 15, the fight for a $15 minimum wage nationally has organized protests all around the country. And they expect, and I expect, that these protests will be very widespread. We're looking at hundreds of thousands of people participating in the protests.

These protests to date have been quite successful in moving the needle around minimum wages. We have, as you know, we have a $15 minimum wage in place in Seattle. We have $13, I think $13.25 in Chicago. They're debating a $15 minimum wage in Los Angeles. Other cities are also taking action. So the movements have been very powerful. They have forced employers, some of the most notorious employers, to raise wages. McDonald's announced last month that they were raising their own, voluntarily raising their own minimum wage in the stores, at the outlets that, at the outlets the corporation itself runs. McDonald's, they're raising it to $9, and next year $10. Target has done the same thing. Wal-Mart has done more or less the same thing.

They're not doing these, these corporations are not taking these actions just to be nice. They're taking them because they're being forced to by the strength of this movement.

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