Fight for 15

One Year From Election, Fast-Food Workers Wage Biggest-Ever Strike

November 10, 2015 Jack Temple, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Fight for 15, Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Workers Rights and Jobs

By Giovanna Vitale and Jack Temple for Fight for $15 - Fast-food workers will wage their biggest-ever strike Tuesday – one year from Election Day – with walkouts hitting a record 270 cities from Detroit to Denver. The strikes will culminate in protests in 500 cities, where fast-food, home care, child care, and other underpaid workers will amass outside city halls—local symbols of political power— to demand that elected leaders nationwide stand up for $15/hr and union rights. The strikes and protests come as underpaid workers nationwide vow to take their Fight for $15 and union rights to the ballot box in 2016 to show candidates of all political stripes that the nearly 64 million Americans paid less than $15 are a voting bloc that can no longer be ignored. In addition to the strikes and city hall protests, auto parts workers, farmworkers, grocery clerks, FedEx drivers, nursing home workers and others will show their support for the Fight for $15 at rallies planned for 1,000 cities across the country, sending a message to candidates that higher pay and union rights are urgent issues for our country that need to be addressed now.

Fast-food Workers Plan New Strike, Aim To Sway Election

November 7, 2015 Paul Davidson, www.usatoday.com Resist! Elections, Fight for 15, Strikes

By Paul Davidson for USA Today - Fast-food workers, already a potent political force, are planning their largest nationwide strike yet next week and this time will leverage their crusade for a $15-an-hour wage in a bid to sway the 2016 presidential election. The group representing the workers, Fight for $15, plans on Tuesday to stage protests at restaurants in 270 cities, the most since it began organizing the demonstrations three years ago. Striking fast-food and other low-wage workers will then gather at local city halls, kicking off a campaign to prod their colleagues to vote next November for local, state and national candidates who support the $15 pay floor.

Richard Wolff: How Workers Can Take Over A Business

October 27, 2015 Andrew Smolski, www.counterpunch.org Create! Fight for 15, TTP, Workers Rights and Jobs

By Andrew Smolski for Counter Punch - In this interview, we discuss wages, a pertinent current topic with the ongoing struggle for $15/hr, stagnating worker incomes, and what will be TPP’s further attack on wages in the United States. More importantly, what began as a discussion of wages quickly developed into a much broader critique of the current system’s political economy, and a way to fundamentally alter the way we produce, distribute, and consume. It is not enough to bargain with capitalists. We must instead look to how workers can take over the means of production and employ them for the benefit and wellbeing of all.

The Fight For $15 And Black Lives Matter Go Hand In Hand

October 21, 2015 Rebecca McGray, www.takepart.com Resist! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Fight for 15

By Rebecca McCray for TakePart - A black woman. A fast-food worker. A student. A parent of a child slain by police. These could be four different identities, or they could be four hats worn by one person. The overlapping and shared desire for better access to justice and equality those roles might share was at the core of a conversation on Monday between organizers from the Fight for $15 and Black Lives Matter movements. “I don’t have to be a worker today and a queer person tomorrow and a woman tonight. I can be all of those things at once,” Alicia Garza, cofounder of Black Lives Matter, told an audience at City University of New York’s Murphy Institute.

The Fight For 15 Just Landed At America’s Busiest Airport

October 5, 2015 David Moberg, www.inthesetimes.com Resist! Fight for 15, Organizing

By David Moberg for In These Times - Encouraged by an energetic rally of more than 100 janitors and other members of Service Employees (SEIU) Local 1, a group of low-wage security, cleaning and passenger service workers at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on Tuesday launched a campaign to organize 5,000 airport workers to win higher wages and the right to form a union without intimidation. The O’Hare organizing drive hopes, first, to bring the non-union workers at the airport into the Fight for $15 movement, initiated three years ago among fast food workers and, according to SEIU, already responsible for raising wages of 11 million workers. Then SEIU organizers hope to use the energy of that campaign for higher pay—and whatever success they have—to help create a union that can continue to defend and bargain for better working conditions.

Newsletter – Black August, End Neo-Slavery, Resist

August 30, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter Arctic drilling, Carbon, Drought, Environmental racism, Fight for 15, Finance and the Economy, Fracking, Gas, Guaranteed basic income, Hurrican Katrina, Iran, Japan, Jeju Island, Korea, Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Oil, Okinawa, Peace, Political Prisoner, Prison, Prison Labor, Private Prisons, Racism, Solar Energy, Sustainable energy, TISA, TPP, TTIP, Wars and Militarism, Wind, Worker Cooperative, Youth imprisonment

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance - Black August is coming to an end as we commemorate the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. As many head back to school, a full season of actions are being planned for the fall to stop the corporate takeover of our communities and world and the push toward neo-slavery. There is a lot of resistance going on. We hope that you have an opportunity this summer to relax and build up your energy for the many actions that are being planned for the fall. If you go to a park, there is one more thing you can do: take a moment to think about the people who inhabited the land before it became a park.

McDonald’s Worker: Fight For $15 Gives Me Hope

August 25, 2015 Bettie Anne Douglas, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Fight for 15, Living Wage, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Bettie Anne Douglas in The Huffington Post - I'm 57 years old and I've worked for McDonald's for seven years, getting paid a few pennies above the federal minimum wage. For a long time, I felt like I had no choice but to accept $7.65 an hour and the daily struggles that come along with that poverty wage. But in the last year, all that has changed. In the March of 2015, I started joining together with my coworkers in the Fight for $15. I've gone on strike, spoken before the St. Louis City Council urging them to raise the city's minimum wage to $15, marched to McDonald's corporate headquarters, and listened along with a hall full of other fast-food workers as Hillary Clinton told us she wanted to be our champion. I've watched as workers who joined together in cities like Los Angeles, New York and even Kansas City (in my home state of Missouri!), won life-changing pay increases. For the first time in a long time, I have hope.

Washington Supreme Court Rules For $15 An Hour At SeaTac

August 23, 2015 Andrew Villeneuve, www.nwprogressive.org Resist! Fight for 15, Living Wage, Minimum Wage

By Andrew Villeneuve for the Northwest Progressive - Workers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport must be paid a minimum wage of $15/hour in accordance with the City of SeaTac’s Good Jobs law (Proposition #1, enacted by voters in 2013) the Washington State Supreme Court ruled today. In a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Susan Owens, the Court held the airport is not exempt from the law, even though it is administered by the Port of Seattle. The Court’s decision – a remarkable dismissal of all the issues raised by the business groups opposed to the law – is a significant victory for Washington State’s labor movement and will result in many more workers receiving badly needed wage increase and additional protections while on the job. Because the City of SeaTac’s interpretation of the state laws governing ports has prevailed, workers earning the lower minimum wage set by the Port of Seattle will see their pay go up. That’s a victory to be celebrated.

University Of California Raising Minimum Wage To $15 An Hour

July 26, 2015 Staff, www.AP.org Resist! Fight for 15, Living Wage, Minimum Wage

By Staff for Associated Press - Protests by Workers and Students Pay Off with $15 an hour Victory The movement to raise the minimum wage across the U.S. gained ground Wednesday with the huge University of California system announcing plans to increase base pay for its employees and contract workers to $15 an hour over the next two years. The move follows similar steps by local governments to give employees what activists call a "living wage." Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley have all approved phased-in increases that eventually will take their minimum wage to $15 an hour, or about $31,200 for a full-time job. UC President Janet Napolitano said that as California's third-largest employer, the university should be taking the lead in ensuring its lowest-paid workers make decent wages. UC has 10 campuses, including UCLA and Berkeley, nearly 240,000 students and a staff of 195,000.

NY Moves Toward $15 Minimum Wage For Fast Food Workers

July 23, 2015 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Fight for 15, Living Wage, Minimum Wage, New York (NY)

By Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance - The raising of the minimum wage in New York for fast food workers is a hard won victory of workers and their allies. As Huffington Post reported: "We did it," Jorel Ware, a member of Fight for $15 and a McDonald's worker from the Bronx, said at a press conference after the hearing. "The Fight for $15 has shown me what's possible when workers stick together." Of the wage board, Ware added, "I want to thank them for understanding what it's like to live in poverty." Under pressure from progressives, Cuomo ordered the state's labor commissioner to convene the wage board earlier this year and asked its members to determine an appropriate statewide wage for the fast-food industry. A press release from the Fight for $15 declared: "When the Board’s three members announced their $15 decision to a packed hearing in Lower Manhattan, workers erupted in cheers, chanting, “We work, we sweat, put $15 in our check.”

Members Of Congress Introduce Largest Minimum Wage Hike Yet

July 22, 2015 Bryce Covert, www.thinkprogress.org Resist! Fight for 15, Law, Living Wage, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Bryce Covert in Think Progress - A $15 minimum wage hike marks a significant increase from past Democratic bills to raise it. In his 2013 State of the Union, President Obama called for an increase to $9 an hour. Some lawmakers went further a month later with a bill that would have raised it to $10.10 an hour. Then earlier this year, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Robert Scott (D-VA) got closer to the $15 mark when theyintroduced a bill raising it to $12 an hour by 2020. Their bill also would phase out the lower minimum wage for tipped employees and automatically increase the wage as median wages rise. Details are not yet available on whether the Sanders and CPC bill will eliminate the tipped wage and when it would take effect.

Engaging The Powers: The Promise Of A New Civil Rights Era

July 17, 2015 Troy Jackson, www.sojo.net Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Civil Rights, Fight for 15, Occupy, Racial Justice

By Troy Jackson in Sojo - When Occupy Wall Street emerged in the fall of 2011 many media personalities and social commentators critiqued the lack of a clear and concise list of demands from the nascent movement. Months later, when the only thing blanketing Zuccotti Park in New York City was freshly fallen snow, I was tempted to write off Occupy as an idealistic moment that produced little lasting change. As we move toward the 4-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, my assessment has changed. Thanks in part to the work of Occupy, America is having a new debate around increasing the minimum wage, restaurant workers are waging their “fight for 15,” and even Wal-Mart recently announced wage increases for employees. We are having new public policy debates around what it means to be part of a moral economy.

Mass. Home Care Workers First To Win $15/Hour Starting Wage

June 27, 2015 Anna Susman, www.popularresistance.org Create! Fight for 15, Labor Unions, Living Wage, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Anna Susman - Tears of joy streaked the faces of cheering home care workers assembled in their Dorchester union hall on Thursday afternoon as a decades-long struggle for recognition and a living wage culminated in a historic moment of celebration. According to an agreement reached in contract negotiations between the 35,000 home care workers of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East and the administration of recently elected Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker (R), Massachusetts Personal Care Attendants (PCAs) are poised to become the first in the nation to achieve a statewide $15 per hour starting wage. Upon reaching the agreement, workers called off the fifteen-hour picket they had planned to begin at the Massachusetts State House on the morning of Tuesday, June 30th. Instead, caregivers are planning a celebration of this milestone and nation-leading achievement of a $15 standard at 4:00 p.m. on the State House steps the afternoon of June 30th.

5,000 Workers Descend On McDonald’s Shareholder Meeting

May 21, 2015 Jack Temple, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Fight for 15, Income inequality, Living Wage, McDonald's

Marching behind a giant banner that read, “McDonald’s: $15 and Union Rights, Not Food Stamps,” 5,000 cooks and cashiers massed at the company’s corporate headquarters Wednesday to kick off the largest-ever protest to hit the burger giant’s annual shareholder meeting. Fed up with pay that drives them to rely on public assistance, angry over the company’s springtime publicity stunt disguised as a wage increase, and emboldened by recent moves by elected leaders in New York and Los Angeles to raise pay to as high as $15, workers surged into the streets outside McDonald’s corporate headquarters, doubling the size of the previous year’s historic protest.

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