Dozens of hourly workers and union organizers protested outside Detroit fast food restaurants as part of a national push for higher wages and better working conditions, The Detroit News reports.
Demonstrators are part of the Michigan Workers Organizing Committee, a coalition of religious groups, community representatives and the Service Employees International Union, according to an article by Tom Greenwood and Serena Maria Daniels.
The campaign is part of a national effort to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and to unionize fast food and retail workers.
Some workers called in sick and others picketed Friday morning outside a Burger King on West 8 Mile, a McDonald's on Gratiot, a Popeye's restaurant on Grand River and a Long John Silver's on East 8 Mile, the paper says.
According to their campaign literature, the average fast food worker earns about $7.40 per hour or just above it. . . .
Fast food workers demonstrate Friday morning in Detroit. [Photo from Detroit15.org]
At the McDonald's on Gratiot and Knodell, the dining room doors were locked Friday morning. A store manager, who would not give his name, said four people did not show up to work.
The manager said the dining room was open to customers but the doors remained locked so protesters could not enter.
The coalition planned a 1 p.m. rally on Belle Isle and a 4 p.m. rally at the Detroit Federation of Teachers, 2875 W. Grand Blvd., The News reports.
Detroit is the fourth city in five weeks to be the site of protests against fast food industry wages, writes Josh Eidelson of The Nation. New York and Chicago had demonstrations last month, as did St. Louis this week.
Organizers say the fast food industry now employs twice as many Detroit-area workers as the city’s iconic auto industry. These strikes also come at a moment of existential crisis for the labor movement, a sobering reality that was brought into sharp relief in December when Michigan, arguably the birthplace of modern US private sector unionism, became the country’s latest “Right to Work” state.
