A new ruling by the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board suggests that McDonald’s Corp. is responsible, in part, for compliance with wage-hour laws and other potential labor issues at its franchises, a decision that should ease union-organizing activities. Click here.
Within each of us, there burns a light of over a billions and billions of souls screaming in agony, of all the pains we hold inside of us
Trying to save those for whom we care and love, including ourselves, and no matter how hard we try, we always get hurt most of all. It is these hard times we call Life.
— Anthony Roman,
Anthony is looking for work at four more fast food outlets after being fired from a McDonalds franchise for lateness. “I’ll work seven days. I’ll do whatever it takes.” He is making time to write and to draw graphic illustrations; he and graphic artist Chris McCamic of Rochester, NY, recently learned that the “Unionizer” figure first appeared publicly in 1911.
An in-progress Unionizer graphic by Anthony Roman
(Unionizer character drawn by Anthony Roman)
I grew up in the Puerto Rican projects on the Lower East Side, and I have lived my whole life within three blocks. None of it has been easy, but it is where I live, and how I relate to the world.
My mom is there, and I must help her, my girlfriend is there. We just had four babies. She is a hospital nurse. She is staying with her mother in the Bronx, and I’m staying with my mother in the lower east side, and spend a couple nights a week in the Bronx. I have a brother who is just out of jail, and another younger brother who can’t really help. I’m behind in the rent, behind in paying for my phone, which I need to get another job, the kids have been sick. It’s tough.
I was working in three McDonalds, usually getting the job to clean up and close up. They give me multiple jobs at once, which is not fair, but I get them all done. Now I work in one McDonalds, with a new manager who is cutting everyone’s hours. A bunch of people there are just walking away from the job because they are unhappy with the manager. This last week, I was totally alone in the kitchen with a line of customers that went out the door. I want to work as much as possible, but they just don’t want it.
Really, I see myself as an artist. I can draw, I can work with signers and rappers, I can help others. I’ve drawn the Unionizer, our mystery superhero figure who can help fast food workers make things better… he has no face, just a cowl, so no gender or anything to limit who the Unionizer is.
We all grew up with Happy Meals, we understood that they meant goodness and happy times, and we were drawn to want to work at McDonalds to be the people who gave other customers Happy Meals. Somehow, it has not quite worked out that way. The bosses are unfair, the pay is not good, you can’t live on it. The managers do not respect us, the workers. That’s actually the biggest thing, the lack of respect. Dignity. It doesn’t cost anything to be nice to workers. The same people mopping shouldn’t be serving the customers too.
I hope to get a job at the hospital where my girlfriend works, and in a bar at night hauling boxes. I will work seven days if I have to just to pay all the bills. I would like to become the first person in my family to go to college.
Here’s a discussion mixing statistics, experiences and politics about minimum wages by an economist and published in The New York Times. Click here.
McDonald’s may now be in support of raising pay for its low-wage workers. Click here.
Recent reports say McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson recently suggested his company would support a bill, proposed by President Barack Obama, raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25. Such a wage hike likely wouldn’t satisfy his workers, some of whom were recently arrested during protests at the company’s Oak Brook, Ill., headquarters demanding $15 an hour. But it would be a shift in attitude for the world’s biggest restaurant chain, which has so far been neutral as the debate about higher wages has roiled around it.
“You know, our franchisees look at me when I say this and they start to worry: ‘Don, don’t you say it. Don’t you say we support $10.10,'” Thompson said during a little-noticed talk at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management last month, according to a Chicago Tribune report. “I will tell you we will support legislation that moves forward.”
Full story here
By Vickie Elmer, May 22 at 12:09 pm
Natasha Carson was a bit frightened on Wednesday afternoon when she found herself at the front of the crowd, carrying part of a banner in the protest against her employer, McDonald’s. She had been part of earlier fast food protests, but this one, at the company’s corporate headquarters outside Chicago, was bigger, with ample media attention and plenty of police.
Police officers, some in riot gear, watched as protesters, including union leaders and clergy, started chanting and singing. “I was pushing away my fear,” Carson said in an interview. “You stand up for your rights and you make history.”
That sentiment comes from a 20-year-old who lives with her mom in Milwaukee, and is known as Tazz. She has worked for McDonald’s for almost five years, starting in high school and now while attending Milwaukee Area Technical College.Organizers say she was the first worker arrested Wednesday, and then 100 others from 33 cities were taken into custody. Continue reading
May 22, 2014 6:02 pm
Even as 400 protesters rallied outside McDonald’s headquarters for a higher minimum wage for fast food workers, the chain’s pay policies generated little noise inside its annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.
A day earlier, more than 100 people were arrested for trespassing after up to 1,500 protesters descended on McDonald’s suburban Chicago headquarters, calling for a $15 an hour minimum wage and a union for fast food workers.The rallies follow recent minimum wage protests across the country amid a growing national debate over income inequality, which President Barack Obama has called “the defining issue of our time.” Continue reading
Bev Horne/AP Hundreds of protesters flooded the streets near the McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill on Wednesday. More than 100 people were arrested.Protesters Seeking Higher Pay for McDonald’s: Workers Swarm McDonald’s Corporate Office near Chicago. More than 100 arrested.
Police on Wednesday arrested more than 100 demonstrators seeking better pay for McDonald’s workers as protesters swarmed the fast-food chain’s corporate campus near Chicago to demand a minimum wage of $15 an hour and the right to unionize. Continue reading
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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Fast food workers from around New York state rallied at the Statehouse on Tuesday to demand a higher minimum wage and support legislation that would let cities and towns set their own wage rules. Continue reading
In a nation that has long operated on the principle that an “American Dream” is available to anyone willing to try hard enough, the term “working poor” may seem to have a bright side. Sure, these individuals struggle financially, but they have jobs — the first and most essential step toward lifting oneself out of poverty, right?
If only it were that simple.
According to 2012 Census data, more than 7 percent of American workers fell below the federal poverty line, making less than $11,170 for a single person and $15,130 for a couple. By some estimates, one in four private-sector jobs in the U.S. pays under $10 an hour. Last month, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have raised the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, despite overwhelming public support for the measure.
And these numbers don’t say anything about the many Americans who earn well above the official poverty line and still barely stay afloat. In HuffPost’s “All Work, No Pay” series, the working poor told their own stories, painting a devastating portrait of their day-to-day struggles.
They’re a diverse range of people: single parents, couples with and without children, young women with graduate degrees, business owners, seniors and everyone in between. Their financial situations, however, show many similarities. Jobs generally provide them with the means to barely scrape by, treading paycheck-to-paycheck, earning just enough to keep from going under, swallowing their pride sometimes to take food stamps or visit food banks. Others are entirely out of work, tirelessly seeking employment and relying on other means to survive.
Through their words, we see what it’s really like to be “working poor” in America — and just how much more it looks like rock bottom than most would imagine. Continue reading
WorkersWrite 