The argument is that fast food depends on wages that are not survivable by its workers. The fast food campaign is at the forefront of a national minimum wage debate, that those who are employed should be able to afford necessities without the help of public assistance funds.
Please see: http://www.fastfoodforward.org
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 continues to prompt stories about low-wage workers and conditions, the growth of the garment labor unions and unions in general, about New York and about the immigrant experience. Please see
In a town renowned for its in-your-face persona, citizens have banded together on issues as diverse as historic preservation, civil rights, wages, sexual orientation and religious freedom. Using artifacts, photographs, audio and visual presentations, as well as interactive components that seek to tell the entire story of activism in the five boroughs, Activist New York presents the passions and conflicts that underlie the city’s history of agitation.
http://www.mcny.org/content/activist-new-york
Workers Write! Literary Journal organizes fiction and other writings by and about the workplace. The current project involves writings about the workplace that is Sports.
Girls Write Now exists to provide guidance, support, and opportunities for at-risk and underserved girls from New York City’s public high schools to develop their creative, independent voices, explore careers in professional writing, and learn how to make healthy school, career and life choices. Take a look:
http://www.girlswritenow.org/
Visit with the signs, songs, banners and research possibilities of social activism and labor:
A public radio interview with Naquasia LeGrand:
http://www.wnyc.org/story/how-fast-food-worker-movement-began/
The National Employment Law Project blogs about issues affecting the unemployed. They too are collecting stories:
http://unemployedworkers.org/sites/unemployedworkers/index.php/site/worker_stories
Dr. Philip Lederer, an infectious disease physician, who has worked in Guatamala, Mozambique and other countries, has been inviting health workers to tell their stories and collecting them at this site:
http://healthworkerstories.org/stories/
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. Lederer’s own story of how he came to infectious diseases and storytelling is at http://healthworkerstories.org/stories/philip-lederer/
The International Domestic Workers’ Network (IDWN) was formed in 2006 to work for rights and protections for those who clean homes, care for the sick and look after the elderly and the young in homes around the globe. In 2011, this international coalition of domestic workers’ groups helped pass the first-ever International Labor Organization Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers which has since been ratified by 11 countries. The AFL-CIO presented its 2013 George Meany–Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award to the IDWN at the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention, the first time a delegation of domestic workers had ever been invited to participate in the annual convention.
http://www.domesticworkers.org/workers-stories
WorkersWrite 