Low wage fast food employees across the country are joining forces Thursday, taking to the streets to say: “Low pay is not okay.”
The action marks the largest planned demonstration yet in a movement that has swelled over the past year, with workers uniting around the call for $15 dollars an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation.
What began with a series of actions led by roughly 200 workers in New York last November has grown into a national movement for a livable wage. Workers for such corporate giants as McDonald’s Corp., Burger King Worldwide Inc. and Yum! Brands (which includes Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC) in over 100 cities are expected to walk off the job Thursday.
“We work for corporations that are making tremendous profits, but do not pay employees enough to support our families and to cover basic needs like food, health care, rent and transportation,” write the protest organizers. “Too many of us are forced to rely on public assistance to scrape by.”
According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, the average fast food worker makes $8.69 an hour with 87 percent receiving no health benefits.
On the Campaign for America’s Future blog, economist Richard Eskow writes that the 10 largest fast food companies cost taxpayers an estimated $3.9 billion in government health assistance and $1.04 billion in food assistance as low wage employees have been forced onto government programs. According to Eskow, roughly half of all fast food workers receive some sort of public assistance.
Meanwhile, as evidenced by an IPS study published Monday, the CEOs of those same companies are pocketing hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidized benefits as they exploit tax loopholes, deducting “unlimited amounts from their income taxes for the cost of stock options, certain stock grants, and other forms of so-called ‘performance pay’ for top executives.”
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