Fast food and retail workers in Chicago have gone on strike, following New York City fast food workers who walked off the job in November and again earlier this month demanding higher wages and better working conditions.
The workers, who are calling for a $15 minimum wage in their Fight for $15 campaign, are being organized by the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago, a non-union community organization.
The campaign, backed by a coalition of Chicago unions and community organizations, has the lofty goal of winning a raise to $15 per hour for workers who make up nearly one-third of all jobs in the city.
The day of action is slated to go into the night, so there's no final count yet of the participating workers, according to The Nation. The workers have come from such national fast-food companies as McDonald's, Subway and Dunkin' Donuts in addition to Protein Bar, which also has restaurants in Washington D.C.
Silvia Garduno, 27, works at a Sally's Beauty Supply store and despite working there for three years; she earns $8.91 per hour.
"We're the ones working our butts off," Garduno says. "$8.91 is ridiculous-especially being downtown. We're worth more." The Loop sees about $4 billion in retail and fast food revenue each year.
In addition to low pay, Garduno says her work at Sally's is sometimes dangerous, like when she says her store was robbed, and is often full of indignities, like when she had to take time off to tend to her sick mother and was told she might be fired.
A recent National Employment Law Project study found that since the 2008 economic crash, the majority of jobs lost have been middle wage jobs (between $13.84 and $21.13), while the bulk of jobs under the "recovery" has been jobs between $7.69 and $13.83. It's what has been called a "McJobs Recovery," in which low-wage jobs are increasingly the only jobs available-for teenagers, young adults, middle-aged workers, everyone.
