Fast food protests: civil disobedience results in hundreds of arrests across US – as it happened

Several hundred protestors shut down streets at two McDonald’s restaurant locations in Chicago Thursday, protesting low wages and arguing for their right to form a union without retaliation, Mark Guarino (@markguarino) reports from Chicago for the Guardian:

“We’re definitely on the upward move because we feel justice is on our side … we can’t wait,” said Douglas Hunter, a McDonald’s worker who said he has difficulty supporting his 16-year-old daughter on his hourly wage. “We think this is ridiculous in a country as rich as America.”

On the South Side in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood, protestors locked arms and sat in the street for about 15 minutes until police dispersed them in the rain.

Nineteen people were arrested. The protestors sang the traditional labor song, “We Shall Not Be Moved,” and speakers, including two Chicago aldermen, spoke about the injustice of working a 40-hour week and still remaining in poverty.

Brittney Bell, a McDonald’s employee for three years, said she works for $8.25 per hour, which she says makes it impossible to raise her family. “I want to tell those who are afraid to step up because we deserve it, we work so hard … that’s the only way we’re going to get it,” she said.

In the afternoon, protestors showed up in west suburban Cicero, where 31 people were arrested and later charged with a misdemeanor, police said. Workers at both protests came from a variety of fast food restaurants and Nancy Salgado, a McDonald’s worker for 12 years, says she attended both rallies to add her voice to what she says is a growing chorus of “thousands and thousands of workers” nationally.

“We are working for a multi-billion dollar company that, year by year, they always make money and we are still living on poverty wages,” she said. “We are just asking for a little bit of that money coming in because of all the hard work that we do.”

In November, Illinois voters will be asked to vote on a referendum that will ask whether they favor increasing the statewide minimum wage to $10 an hour from $8.25.

Burger King’s Twitter presents as relatively unbothered by the hundreds of arrests today of fast food workers and sympathetic others. Although it is hard to tell just what that dancing burger is thinking.

Arrests in Madison, Wisconsin:

Arrests in Durham, North Carolina, MSNBC reports:

Arrest in Oakland:

Under arrest in Los Angeles:

“Here’s the secret of fast-food strikes: they’re working,” writes Guardian US finance and economics editor Heidi Moore (@moorehn):

Thursday’s national fast-food protests in 100 cities, with the scenes of workers marching through major cities including New York and Las Vegas, may look familiar - and that’s no coincidence. Labor leaders in major unions including the SEIU and AFL-CIO have been supporting one-day strikes for fast-food and hospitality workers for over nearly two years since November 2012. From the first $15-an-hour protest in Seattle in May 2013 to a convention in July, 60 cities on 29 August 29, and Thursday’s first widespread act of intentional civil obedience in the movement, the development of the fast-food protests has shown evidence of a labor movement ready to re-make itself.

“The unions themselves are recognizing that the old system is broken and they need to retool and try new strategies and new things, and that’s what the fast food strikes represent,” says Professor Ruth Milkman of the City University of New York (Cuny), who has co-authored a new report on the progress of the labor movement in New York and the rest of the US.

Today’s strikes are different from previous ones in a number of ways, demonstrating the willingness to innovate, said Milkman. The widespread civil disobedience - courting potential arrest by walking out on the job - is one aspect that has been widely mentioned. Other innovations: the addition of home healthcare workers, a separate industry that major unions like the SEIU have worked hard to unionize, but which has not received as much attention as fast food. Tying the two industries together is, for the unions, a way to widen their reach.

The biggest difference in these strikes, writes Heidi, is that “the major labor unions are trying to organize not just fast-food workers, but owners of franchises, to unite both against fast-food giants like McDonald’s, Burger King and others.”

“The franchisers themselves are tightly squeezed with costs,” says Milkman.

Read the full piece here.

Taking a stand/seat in LA:

Rory Carroll finds many non-fast-food-industry workers at the LA rally:

Arrests in Memphis:

(#ff: @LowPayIsNotOK)

The Guardian’s Rory Carroll is at a big rally in Los Angeles:

“McDonald’s left us with no choice”: The Guardian’s Dominic Rushe flags this quote from a McDonald’s employee, distributed by the strike organizers:

“McDonald’s left us with no choice, but to turn up our call for $15 and union rights,” said Michael Lee, who works at McDonald’s in Greeensboro, N.C., and earns $8 an hour an hour. “We are struggling to survive and are going to do whatever it takes for our movement to win.”

Arrests in Pittsburgh (further report here):

(h/t: @lilahrap)

Arrests in Boston:

Arrests in Miami:

Hundreds of US economists support raising the minimum wage to the White House target of $10.10, the Guardian’s Jana Kasperkevic (@kasperka) reports:

In line with White House proposal, Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. George Miller have introduced a bill that would increase the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016. Their proposal would also increase the tipped minimum wage from the current $2.13 to 70% of the regular minimum wage.

In January, over 600 economists, including 7 Nobel laureates, signed a letter in support of such increase. The letter, quoted by the Economic Policy Institute, read in part:

This policy would directly provide higher wages for close to 17 million workers by 2016. Furthermore, another 11 million workers whose wages are just above the new minimum would likely see a wage increase through “spillover” effects, as employers adjust their internal wage ladders ... At a time when persistent high unemployment is putting enormous downward pressure on wages, such a minimum-wage increase would provide a much-needed boost to the earnings of low-wage workers.

Arrests in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania:

The Guardian’s Rory Carroll will cover protest activity today in Los Angeles:

Arrests in Hartford, Connecticut:

Arrests now in Philadelphia:

The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino witnesses more arrests in New York City:

After reporting from Times Square this morning, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino is at a second rally in New York City on behalf of fast food workers. A march started near the SEIU office on 43rd Street, she says, and headed up 8th Avenue, passing a McDonald’s in the 50s:

The president is not stumping for $15 – but the White House has come out for a $10.10 minimum wage:

“While Republicans in Congress continue to block the President’s proposal,” the White House says, “a number of state legislatures and governors, mayors and city councils, and business owners have answered the President’s call and raised wages for their residents and employees.”

Click here (pdf) to read an August 2014 White House report on changing minimum wage laws. The report says 13 states and Washington DC have passes minimum wage increases since early 2013, to the benefit of about 7m workers by the year 2017, according to estimates from the Council of Economic Advisers.

President Obama used an executive order to raise the minimum wage for workers on new federal contracts to $10.10.

(h/t: @kasperka)

Dominic Rushe (@domincru) has been speaking to Arun Ivatury, campaign strategist for National Employment Law Project. Ivatury believes the fight to raise the minimum wage is at a tipping point, Dominic writes – pun intended:

“We have seen these actions growing for two years. Each time we see one of these actions, it’s bigger and covers more cities than the last,” Ivatury said. “There is a long tradition in this country of activism leading to social change.”

The scale of the issue was enormous, he said. President Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum to $10.10 would impact 28 million people, said Ivatury. Raising it to $15 could impact 50 million workers.

Ivatury pointed to Seattle, which has already raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour, and proposals in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles to increase the minimum to $13. “This would never have happened without these campaigns,” he said. “Ultimately what’s happening at the local level will push Washington to act.”

A protest in Kansas City:

(h/t: @lilahrap)

Eleven people have been arrested in fast food strikes in San Diego, the local ABC News affiliate reports:

The dozens of workers and their supporters in San Diego held a news conference near a McDonald’s in City Heights early this morning, then began marching to nearby Burger King and Jack in the Box restaurants. At one point, they shut down an intersection at University Avenue, over the Interstate 15 freeway.

Read more here. (h/t: @lilahrap)

Reports of arrests in Little Rock, Arkansas:

(h/t: @lilahrap)

Wage action in Boston:

(h/t: @lilahrap)

#fastfoodstrike: Trending nationally on Twitter:

(h/t: @dominicru)

A protest march is under way outside a McDonald’s in Philadelphia:

(h/t: @lilahrap)

Arrests outside a McDonald’s (and across the street from a Papa John’s) in Indianapolis, Indiana:

(h/t: @lilahrap)

No Egg McMuffins for Oakland today:

And more arrests in San Diego:

(h/t: @lilahrap)

The Guardian’s Dominic Rushe (@dominicru) notes that today’s protests have substantial union backing – and that the national unions may be on the verge of a new entry into the fast food industry:

The strike is being backed by SEIU, Service Employees International Union , which represents about 2 million workers across the US, mainly in health care, public services and property services including janitors and security officers.

SEIU has been moving to unionise more fast food workers but at the moment has to do that one franchise at a time because the franchisers are legally the fast food workers employers. That may be about to change. You can read about that heated debate here.

The New York City Coalition Against Hunger has released a statement in support of the fast food strikes.

“We stand in solidarity with the thousands of fast-food workers joining together across the nation to call for an increase in the minimum wage,” the statement says in part.

“Today, a person working full-time at minimum wage is not able to lift themselves out of poverty. That’s not only morally repugnant, it’s bad economic policy.

No American should ever go hungry, but it is particularly appalling when those who pick or serve our food do.

New data released yesterday by the USDA shows that levels of hunger in America remain unchanged from a year ago – with 49 million Americans and 16 million children – unable to afford enough food. Many of these Americans are in households that work but earn too little.

(h/t: @kasperka)

In the debate over what fast food workers are paid and what health care and other benefits they receive, McDonald’s has contended that its franchisees – the owners who operate individual restaurants – are liable for labor and wage issues, not the parent company.

But a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board in July rebutted the argument, when the board’s general counsel found that McDonald’s could be held jointly liable for violations by franchise operators.

Steven Greenhouse reported on the ruling in the New York Times:

The ruling comes after the labor board’s legal team investigated myriad complaints that fast-food workers brought in the last 20 months, accusing McDonald’s and its franchisees of unfair labor practices. [...]

The fast-food workers who filed cases asserted that McDonald’s was a joint employer on the grounds that it orders its franchise owners to strictly follow its rules on food, cleanliness and employment practices and that McDonald’s often owns the restaurants that franchisees use.

McDonald’s said it would contest the decision, warning that the ruling would affect not only the fast-food industry but businesses like dry cleaners and car dealerships.

Greenhouse notes that the fight over who is responsible for franchise employees has implications beyond the fast food industry:

Business groups called the [NLRB] decision outrageous. Some legal experts described it as a far-reaching move that could signal the labor board’s willingness to hold many other companies to the same standard of “joint employer,” making businesses that use subcontractors or temp agencies at least partly liable in cases of overtime, wage or union-organizing violations.

Read the full piece here.

The SEIU tweets a picture of a strike outside a Wendy’s in Delaware:

Los Angeles:

Al-Jazeera English columnist Sarah Kendzior reports eight people were arrested in fast food strikes in St Louis:

Arrests in Detroit:

About a half dozen protesters were arrested at a rally outside a McDonald’s in Chicago this morning, the Tribune reports, estimating that there were about 150 protesters at the scene:

Organizers planned to ramp up protests to include acts of civil disobedience. The workers involved said they are willing to be arrested as they try to get their message across, organizers involved in the Fight for $15 movement said. [...]

On 87th Street, about 150 fast food workers, health care workers, organizers and community members shouted, pumped their fists and chanted “we are the union, the mighty, mighty union,” outside of a McDonald’s in the Far South Side during a protest on Thursday.

Read the full piece here. (h/t: @dominicru)

McDonalds is tweeting dollar signs made out of jalepeño peppers. Workers claim the corporation has plenty of jalepeños to draw a double-digit number next to that $.

“We believe that any minimum wage increase should be implemented over time so that the impact on owners and small and medium-sized businesses — like the ones who own and operate the majority of our restaurants — is manageable,” McDonald’s said a statement about the protest movement quoted by USA Today.

Protesters are out this morning in Chicago, the site last July of a summit meeting of service industry employees to fix on a national strategy to gain a living wage:

An assemblywoman tweets a photo from a San Diego rally:

And here’s the scene inside a Taco Bell in Charleston, South Carolina, via the Washington Post:

The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino (@lgamgam) has shot a brief video clip of the Times Square protest this morning. “No justice, no peace,” the marchers chant:

You can read Guardian business correspondent Dominic Rushe’s (@dominicru) report on the fast-food workers’ movement here.

The workers are asking for a minimum wage of $15/hour, up from the current federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour.

Ronald seems opposed?

There are reports of arrests at protests in support of a $15/hour wage for fast food workers in Detroit and Las Vegas. Follow the hashtags #fastfoodstrike and #strikefastfood for more pictures and reports. Here’s a helicopter photo from Detroit:

I’ve spoken with Lauren Gambino about the protest this morning in Times Square. She says a few hundred people showed up at the demonstration at about 6.30 am. The rally centered on a McDonalds, which remained open, Lauren tells me.

Five to 10 people were arrested, she said, but “it was all very civil”:

Everyone was in fairly good spirits. They gathered close to the McDonalds in Times Square to start. It was a combination of people. Fast-food workers. There were also home care workers. There were also other union members and supporters.

An update on the number of arrests:

The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino has been watching a protest in New York’s Times Square that began at 7am.

The protest has drawn a large crowd, some of whom are participating in a sit-in that has led to some arrests.

Lauren asked protester Brenda Bell whether it was worth being arrested. “Yes,” Bell said.