McWages
In recent weeks, downtown crowds have seen something unusual at lunchtime: fast-food workers on strike. In city centers across the U.S., thousands have participated in daylong actions. While most labor strikes these days aim only to mitigate ongoing losses, the fast-food workers have a more ambitious demand. They think they deserve $15 an hour, more than twice what some of them currently make.
They’re right. If it looks like the strikers are overreaching, that’s just because they’re so woefully underpaid now.
It’s not like fast-food chains—which are highly profitable—can’t afford to pay a little better. The problem is that the chains can’t afford to raise wages on their own, because that would give a competitive edge to the place down the street. Hence the response by workers of an industry-wide strike.
