{"id":1512,"date":"2013-05-10T16:51:04","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T22:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=1512"},"modified":"2013-05-10T16:51:04","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T22:51:04","slug":"fast-food-workers-strike-in-st-louis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/fast-food-workers-strike-in-st-louis\/","title":{"rendered":"Fast Food Workers Strike in St. Louis"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Annie Shields<\/a>, The Nation
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

Fast food and retail workers in St. Louis, Missouri, walked off the job Wednesday in the third major strike of its kind in recent weeks. The walkout came after a citywide fast food and retail workers strike in New York on April 4th and another in Chicago on April 24.<\/p>\n

Workers at Jimmy John\u2019s in the Soulard neighborhood were the first to walk out in a surprise strike, and employees at a McDonald\u2019s in north county followed Wednesday evening. Organizers anticipated that workers at at least thirty restaurants, including Wendy\u2019s, Hardee\u2019s and Domino\u2019s, would join in additional walkouts on Thursday. Like strikers in New York and Chicago, the St. Louis workers are calling for a living wage of $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. The current hourly minimum wage in Missouri is $7.35.<\/p>\n

The \u201cSTL Can\u2019t Survive On $7.35\u201d campaign is being spearheaded by the organizing group St. Louis Jobs With Justice. And while a living wage is a central demand of the campaign, Missouri Jobs With Justice director Lara Granich says that at organizing meetings, the most common complaints have to do with issues of dignity. Workers overwhelmingly express that they\u2019re not being treated with respect by their employers. Rasheen Aldridge, a striking Jimmy John\u2019s employee, described the disparaging treatment workers in his store are subjected to in\u00a0a video<\/a>\u00a0for the\u00a0St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/em>\u201cWe\u2019re treated like crap basically. It\u2019s almost like new-day slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Angela Harrison, a McDonald\u2019s employee striking on Wednesday, echoed that sentiment. \u201cWe want respect, and we want fifteen and a union, and that\u2019s not too much to ask for.\u201d She said that even workers who had been physically hurt on the job or burned by equipment were not treated properly. \u201cWe want simple things, like the first-aid kit to be fully stocked all the time.\u201d Harrison also pointed to the lack of sick days as an issue she\u2019d like to see resolved. Right now she has to choose between coming to work sick, putting customers at risk or missing out on pay.<\/p>\n

Harrison, who first learned about the plan to strike less than two weeks ago, has worked at McDonald\u2019s for three and a half years, yet makes only $7.75 an hour\u2014just fifty cents more than the wage she started at. She says that pooling her money with her boyfriend\u2019s is the only way to make ends meet, and often that\u2019s not even enough. \u201cSometimes we have to choose between paying the phone bill and buying groceries. We shouldn\u2019t have to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison had never participated in a strike before Wednesday, and said that it was knowing there was so much community support behind the strikers that helped her make the decision to walk out. Organizers have committed to helping workers get their jobs back in case of retaliation.<\/p>\n

With the fast food industry growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy, improving working conditions and raising wages for these workers is even more urgent, Granich says. \u201cThese are the jobs of tomorrow, so we need to work together as a community to make them family-friendly. And that\u2019s not only about wages, but also sustainable hours, a voice on the job, healthcare coverage\u2014all these things really matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Annie Shields, The Nation click here for original article Fast food and retail workers in St. Louis, Missouri, walked off the job Wednesday in the third major strike of its kind in recent weeks. The walkout came after a citywide fast food and retail workers strike in New York on April 4th and another in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/fast_food_strikers_stlouis.jpg?fit=615%2C419&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1512"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1515,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512\/revisions\/1515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}