NYC Fast Food Workers Picket, Want Restaurants To Pay $15 Per Hour
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Hundreds of fast food workers and supporters protested outside New York City restaurants Thursday to demand higher wages for their low-paying jobs, including about 60 who chanted "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Minimum wage has got to go!" at a midtown Wendy's.
Linda Archer said she has worked at a nearby McDonald's for three years and makes $8 an hour. The protesters want fast food restaurants to pay $15 per hour, almost double the current statewide average pay of $8.25 per hour.
"I'm asking for respect, I'm asking for $15, I'm asking for a union, I'm asking for job security," she said. McDonald's said in a statement that it values and respects all the employees who work at its restaurants.
New York's minimum wage is $7.25 but the state Legislature last month voted to raise it to $9 by 2016.
The day of picket lines organized by a coalition of unions and community groups followed a similar job action last November. Organizers said they expected hundreds of workers to demonstrate Thursday at dozens of fast food establishments, including McDonald's, Domino's, Wendy's and Pizza Hut.
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said he supports the push for higher wages.
"These families are facing an economic crisis now and they can't afford to wait years for help," de Blasio said in a statement. "Our economic future depends on helping all working people and those at the bottom of the economic ladder work their way up. That's the only way to ensure no one is left behind."
Fast food workers deserve union representation, said Richard Trumka, national president of the AFL-CIO, who stopped by the Wendy's protest.
"They're being mistreated, they're being underpaid, they're going to stand together until they get fair treatment and we're going to stand with them," Trumka said.
Shahnaz Perveen ate her lunch inside Wendy's while protesters marched outside but said she supported the workers' demands. "They work really hard," she said.
Thursday's action also commemorated the assassination 45 years ago of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, where he was supporting a strike by sanitation workers.
Several pickets wore signs that said "I am a man" or "I am a woman," echoing placards carried in Memphis in 1968.
Share your thoughts in the comments section below...
(TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
