Fast food workers strike work in New York, demand better wages

Last week it was Wal Mart, this week it is McDonald's Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell and KFC as hundreds of employees in the US abandoned their jobs demanding better wages and the right to form a union. Demanding $15 an hour in pay, and the right to form a union fast food workers today struck work to fight against the "poverty wages" they are being paid.

Los Angeles Times quoted Jonathan Westin, organising director of New York Communities for Change, which helped to organise the strike, as saying that most workers were being paid minimum wage they could not afford, they could not put food on the table and many people relied on public assistance to subsidise their wages.

According to Westin, the first walkout began at a McDonald's on Madison Avenue at 6:30 am, with 14 workers refusing to enter the building – the majority of the morning shift, and Westin said, protests were now moving to downtown Brooklyn, the Penn Station area, and Times Square.

Organising service workers was often difficult due to the changing nature of their shifts and it was even more difficult to organise low-wage workers in a bad economy, as people were afraid they would not be able to find a new job.

However, Westin said his group had been talking to workers through the summer and interest grew following Wal-Mart workers walking off the job last week followed by workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The actions followed a relatively quiet period on the labour front, broken by the Chicago teacher's strike earlier this year and a strike by employees of Hostess Brands that the company said was responsible for driving it out of business.