Surprise fast food strike planned in St. Louis

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Salon.com

Breaking: Walkout to include workers from McDonald’s and Wendy’s. Follows similar actions in New York and Chicago

By Josh Eidelson

For the third time in five weeks, non-union fast food workers in a major American city are headed out on strike. Starting at 5 p.m. Central Time today, dozens of employees plan to walk off the job in St. Louis, following similar strikes in Chicago April 24, and in New York City on Nov. 29 and April 4. Like their counterparts in New York and Chicago, the St. Louis workers are demanding a $15 an hour wage, and the chance to form a union without intimidation.

“I just feel that if we don’t stand up now, it’s never going to happen,” said Tomecka Wilson, a 32-year-old who works for the seafood chain Captain D’s. “They’re making billions off of us making little to nothing. So they can afford to share a little bit more.”

Organizers expect 50 to 70 St. Louis workers to strike over the next 24 hours, including workers from McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Hardee’s and Domino’s. The strike got an early start this morning, when a group of workers at a Jimmy John’s went out on strike in protest over alleged humiliation by management: They say their boss required them to wear signs stating that they worked too slowly. “It’s clearly getting national traction,” said Ed Ott, a lecturer in labor studies for the City University of New York, consultant for unions, and board member of New York Communities for Change, the group spearheading fast food organizing in the nation’s largest city. “This is potentially the largest organizing drive in decades.”

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://www.salon.com/2013/05/08/surprise_fast_food_strike_planned_in_st_louis/

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Demonstrators protesting low wages and the lack of union representation in the fast food industry stand outside McDonald's in New York, April 4, 2013.(Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson)

[femmocrat]

1. K & R

The movement seems to be growing!

[Sherman A1]

2. K&R

I know there is a rally tomorrow in St. Louis.

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. WHAT!? These ingrates are turning their backs upon LOYALTY DAY!?

Worker's rights! STRIKE! WIN!

[Summer Hathaway]

4. What does this have to do with Loyalty Day?

Haven't enough people here embarrassed themselves on that topic?

Are you raising the subject so that they can rant and rave yet again about how Obama 'made up' the holiday?

[Bonobo]

6. The question of who made it up is irrelevant.

But the spewing of Right-wing sounding rah rah, flag-sucking rhetoric from our side is sick-making for many of us.

You may not like that because it is "our guy&quot TM) that is leading the flag-sucking, but it is the same.

[Summer Hathaway]

8. The question of

"who made it up" was far from irrelevant to those who thought it was Obama's brain child.

Yeah, the rah-rah flag-sucking rhetoric was pretty overwhelming - the endless TV coverage of Loyalty Day parades in cities and small towns across the country, everyone prancing around in Loyalty Day tee-shirts, drunks vomiting in the streets after imbibing too many of the traditional Loyalty Day drinks at the local bars, horn-honking cars festooned with Loyalty Day banners, etc.

Except none of that happened. In fact, most people didn't know there was such a thing as "Loyalty Day", until some posters-with-an-agenda thought it was something they could pillory Obama over - the facts of the matter be damned - and immediately switched to Plan B (we can still blame Obama for observing Loyalty Day, despite the fact that his predecessors observed it in the same way for decades) rather than admit they got it wrong in the first place.

All in all, it was a great day on DU. The I'll believe ANYTHING if I can blame Obama for it folks outed themselves with great success - and, as per usual, refused to acknowledge that facts should stand in the way of coming to totally wrong conclusions.

It was a Massive Fail - and pretending it was anything other than a Massive Fail is even more amusing than the original blunder.

[BuelahWitch]

5. That poor pregnant woman who was turned down for food stamps

Our system is so sick!

[alp227]

7. If it's in the news it's not a surprise anymore. And yes it's the WORKERS' SPRING.

I called it first on DU right here in December! http://democraticunderground.com/10021940263