This is the latest of a series of actions across the United States that includes the Wal-Mart workers walkout on ‘Black Friday’, and the New York Fast Food worker walk out in November and April. This action, organized by Fight for 15 and the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago (WOCC), and backed by Action Now and SEIU.

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In fact, Ned Resnikoff explains that “New York’s fast food campaign is the “main model” for the Chicago strike, said Hernandez. WOCC members recently met with two New York fast food workers and some Argentinian guest workers who staged a surprise strike at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s in March. Hernandez said that the Chicago workers and New York workers were fundamentally engaged in the same struggle.”

The similar strategies are in many ways a consequence of the fact that so many people in the country are facing similar economic problems.

In a report published last summer, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) highlighted the changing nature of employment in the United States, particularly the ways in which service and retail work is coming to replace manufacturing as the major industry. This shift has seen increased corporate profits at the expense of stagnant wages, less consistent work and fewer benefits.

In fact, even though lower-wage jobs only made up 21% of the jobs lost in the recession, since then, most of the new jobs (approximately 58%) in the last two years have been low-wage jobs -representing about 43% of employment growth.

The walkout in Chicago shows the ways in which low-wage workers are finding new ways to organize in a changing economic landscape affecting workers across America.

In the lead up to April 4^th - which marked both the 45^th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.,  as well as the one-day  Fast Food worker strike in New York City – the MLAC table of UnitedNY  organized an event in Jamaica, Queens  to discuss both historical and contemporary struggles for social and economic justice.

More than 100 people gathered at the SUNY Queens Education Opportunity Center for a screening of At the River I Stand, a 1993 documentary film the recounts the Memphis Sanitation workers’ strike and King’s involvement in the organizing, which sharply highlighted the ways in which the struggles for economic and civil rights are connected.  

The film was followed by a panel discussion, that included Charles Jenkins (Director of Organizing Transportation Workers Union Local 100), Dr. L. Toni Lewis (Staff Chair of SEIU Healthcare), Brenda Stokely (former Local 215 President), Minister Lawrence Hendrickson (Director of the Social Justice Ministry at the Powerful Praise Tabernacle), and artist and activist Harry Belafonte. On a whole, these speakers talked about the current struggles that low-wage workers are fighting today, in relation to King’s organizing for economic justice in 1968.

Click here to view a video  from the panel discussion

4 months ago, workers at fast food restaurants across the city stood in solidarity with New Yorkers to protest the rising inequality in this city. We cannot go on being a city divided by inequality, a city that works only for a few and does not lift us all and give us the chance to provide for ourselves or for our families.

Join us and support these brave New Yorkers as they stand together and with us to fight for a city that works for all.

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On the 45^th Anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, we are answering a call to stand in solidarity with ongoing struggles for social and economic justice by low wage workers in the city.

In the days and weeks leading up to his death, Dr. King was in Memphis, Tennessee, organizing alongside striking sanitation workers. He was very explicit the fact that the Civil Rights movement was far from complete without real gains made for more broad forms of social and economic justice.

In a speech delivered the day before his assassination on April 3, King told the sanitation workers gathered that: “We’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end.  Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through”.

Almost a half-decade later, the struggle continues, and King’s words remain increasingly true. Across New York, low-wage workers are fighting for better wages and improved working conditions. From Carwash workers to Airport Worker, folks are ‘giving themselves to this struggle until the end,’ so they can take care of themselves and their families.

Join UnitedNY and Fast Food Forward on Thursday at 5:30 at Madison Ave and 124th, Marcus Garvey Park 

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We’ll be going to Senator Malcolm Smith’s office, as well as calling on Senators Jeffrey Klein and Diane Savino, to tell him that we’re not going to stand quietly as low-wage workers are robbed of a decent way of a life. Low-wage workers are being thrown under the bus once again while corporations sit pretty with convenient tax breaks. When will the working man ever catch a break? Contact these senators today as we march on Senator Smith’s office at 205-20 Jamaica Avenue in Hollis, Queens, to tell our law makers that we’re tired of being thrown under the bus:

Senator Jeff Klein, 518-455-3595

Senator Malcolm Smith, 718-454-0162

Senator Diane Savino, 718-727-9406 

The students in the program claim, like many working low-wage jobs in America, that they were given so few hours and earned so little that there was rarely money left over after rent was deducted from their paychecks. Alternately, some worked straight 25-hour non-stop shifts, usually at minimum wage or less and no paid overtime. Workers had no methods of transportation and had no choice to work double shifts as their boss-landlord also served as their ride home. Manager would give little notice of shift changes, demanding the students to go to work on the spot. One student described living conditions as rooming with five others, a mix of men and women, all sharing a one-room apartment and sleeping in children’s bunk beds.

Physically and emotionally traumatized, the students took their complaints to the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. State Department. While McDonald’s claims ignorance about the abuses being endured by these foreign students, this practice is in line with low-wage working immigrants in America who are exploited because their statuses are threatened. Last week, the guest workers rallied before one of the three McDonald’s in Pennsylvania owned by “exploiteur” Andy Cheung, despite harassment from managers and being locked out of their temporary residences, but plan to take their protest to New York’s largest McDonald’s in Times Square. In addition, they are demanding the fast food giant pay what they are owed in lost overtime wages, the fees spent to enroll in the work program, and for McDonald’s to acknowledge all of its stores where these foreign students are employed and to protect them with standards of labor. Unfortunately, these exploitation practices aren’t new: in 2011, guest workers at a packing plant for Hershey’s staged a walk-off due to poor working conditions, though they were eventually rewarded lost wages.

Please join us at McDonald’s in Times Square at noon this Thursday, March 14^th, and tell McDonald’s, Andy Cheung and labor supplier GeoVisions that every worker deserves to be protected from abuse no matter where they come from. For more information, please visit the Guestworker Alliance’s website and Facebook page. Click here to sign the petition to make McDonald’s pay what they owe to these workers.

(Photo courtesy of the National Guestworker Alliance Facebook page)

Yesterday representatives from community and labor groups set their sights on Washington D.C. on March 5^th to let lawmakers know that a $7.25 an hour paycheck was a futile way of life for a full-time worker trying to make ends meet.

And here in New York, Assembly Democrats announced a bill was in the making to increase the minimum wage up to $9. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was joined by RWDSU leader Stuart Appelbaum, is still negotiating the exact wage increase, but the bill has the support of the majority of the rest of the assembly and a strong majority in the New York State Senate and has already been budgeted as part of Governor Cuomo’s spending proposal. But an increase for a full-time worker amounts to just $18,720 a year, more than $3,000 below the line of poverty for a family of four. The bill is in improvement, but more must be done.

Click here to add your voice and let our Reps know that we need a raise!

These bills in Albany and DC face strong opposition from corporate giants who make it rich by paying poverty level wages. Two minimum wage workers stood up to tell their stories very common in the low-wage worker tapestry: the low-wage industry consists of jobs often physically demanding, putting one’s health at risk, and workers in cities with high costs of living like New York don’t make enough to cover the average cost of rent in city, let alone afford the demands of everyday life. One woman documented her journey from middle class to working class– a transition that has happened to many– after a move to Chicago, and the palpable nature of the money worries she and her peers experience.

With the new minimum wage indexed to inflation, the wage will continue to rise along with the cost of living. A minimum wage increase only stands to help jog the economy and claims that it will be detrimental to hiring and for small businesses have been disproved  It’s high time the government gave back to the working class that helps fuel the economy, as over the past 30 years, it’s the 1% that has generated all the earning power. Let’s hope this is a step towards removing the working class from the cycle of poverty that has plagued our economy in crisis, and leading them closer to a life of upward mobility and without dependence on government services.

In the face of the fiscal cliff, and now, the just-passed sequester, the Dow Jones hit a record high just a week ago. Does this mean the home of the American Dream is rebounding better than its European peers? No, because success in stocks and mutual funds only favors this country’s 1%, whose investments account for more than half. Despite our government’s recovery efforts, all that shows signs of recovering thus far are profits of corporations, many that are protected by loopholes which allow them to neglect paying the entirety of their taxes and re-investing in the very economy where it thrives, and in addition, aren’t creating jobs to spread this tremendous wealth.

Conservatives in power are being funded by the super wealthy and continue to insist that the trickle-down effect will save the economy, but no one but the rich are seeing that wealth and it just hurts those that are already in need because cuts to public sector jobs and safety nets like Medicare and Social Security are being threatened. As the government prepares to raise taxes, it’s the middle class that suffers, at risk to lose upwards of 800,000 jobs, the same ones who keep the economy in gear. The austerity is ushering in a new era and the horizon looks dreary.

“If they want a franchise to operate in New York City, then they have to rehire those workers today!” stated  Councilman Brad Lander to the energized crowd. “This is about not treating one particular sect differently from the other and this is really about respecting the right to organize,” said Councilwoman Letitia James about Cablevision’s notorious union-busting history and reputation for retaliating against unionized employees. A hearing scheduled after the press conference would go towards deciding the fate of the fired workers.

This money could easily help us combat the upcoming “sequester” on March 1^st, which promises to cut crucial services like health care and education in order to curb government spending. While companies like Goldman Sachs get richer, New York is at risk for losing funding for poor students, special education students, and low-performing schools. “Big corporations like Goldman Sachs must pay their fair share. School cuts hurt, and our children deserve better,” said Zakiyah Ansari, a Brooklyn mother of eight and Advocacy Director for Alliance for Quality Education.

This action is a follow-up to January’s protest at General Electric’s 30 Rockefeller Center headquarters. Both G.E.’s and Goldman Sachs’ CEOs are board members of the Fix the Debt campaign, a front which believes this country’s economy can be saved by cutting services to those who need them most while preserving tax loopholes for already wealthy companies.