As dozens of supporters cheered him on, Marielle Crowley, a McDonald’s employee for the past six years, walked off his job Thursday morning.
For Crowley, 20, it was a decision he made without hesitation.
“It was time for a change,” Crowley said outside the McDonald’s restaurant at the busy corner of N. Mayfair Road and W. Burleigh St. “I live with my parents, and I’m not making enough money. I can’t afford to go to the hospital if I’m sick.”
The yearlong effort to draw attention to the wages paid to fast-food and retail workers hit Milwaukee on Thursday, the second time this year the city has been targeted. This week, similar protests or strikes occurred in Kansas City, St. Louis and Detroit, with workers walking off the job, not showing up for work and picketing other stores.
In Milwaukee, workers’ rights groups are making two demands: an increase in wages up to $15 an hour and the right to organize a union without the fear of retaliation. Both of them are long shots given a still recovering economy and the diminished power of organized labor.
Supporters here have formed the Milwaukee Workers Organizing Committee to fight for better pay and union representation. The group has been recognized by the National Labor Relations Board, but not by fast-food restaurants and retail firms.
13 thoughts on “Milwaukee fast food workers walk off jobs to fight for better wages”
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$15 sounds pretty reasonable to me.
“Minimum Wage Would Be $21.72 If It Kept Pace With Increases In Productivity: Study ”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/minimum-wage-productivity_n_2680639.html
Yes, give those greedy corporations even more reason to automate fast food restaurants.
http://www.psfk.com/2012/11/burger-making-robot.html
If we listen to the likes of Bloomberg and Michelle Obama, we shouldn’t be eating at those places anyway, so maybe this is the first step down the road of putting them all out of work.
fmsn,
Are labor costs destiny?
Asking for a friend.
Eat your broccoli and stop asking questions. 🙂
OH BOO HOO he is still living with his parents. Well may I suggest go to a local college or tech school get an education and improve yourself, that is YOUR job to make sure you have a wage you can live on it is not McDonalds responsibility
Beserkely,
Sorry about your sniffles.
He lives at home, because, “he’s tight with a dollar.”
1. What degree should he get?
2. How long will it take? How much will it cost?
3. Where is the demand for that job? Please post a link.
4. What’s the earnings trajectory? Please post a link.
Ok you are right, since it will take a few years to graduate and he would have the terrible burden of paying for it well I agree he should not even try and instead just have his current pay increased to $15 that is the easiest and makes the most sense
1. What degree should he get?
Beserke: No clue, I just make sh!t up.
2. How long will it take? How much will it cost?
Beserke: Answering that would take research.
3. Where is the demand for that job? Please post a link.
Beserke: Answering that would take effort.
4. What’s the earnings trajectory? Please post a link.
Beserke: See my responses above.
Beserke,
If you were a Republican or a conservative, you would be supporting a FEDERAL job guarantee:
“….Should the federal government bailout Detroit? That’s the question everyone is debating. We think the discussion should be expanded well beyond this narrow question. Detroit is the canary in the coal mine, but it’s symptomatic of a bigger problem, which is the lack of jobs and decent demand in the economy.
The problem is that the president believes we can cure our jobless problem by providing the proper incentives to the business community. So they’ll be all of this talk about “incentive zones”, we’re sure for Detroit. And here he is committing one of the few big policy blunders from Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. Like Johnson, who focused on retraining the unemployed for jobs that did not exist, Obama has focused on incentivizing the businesses community to hire workers to produce for customers that do not exist. Time and again, Obama has shown that he will only tinker around the edges, relying on the same tired supply-side initiatives that will not work: more incentives to build business confidence, subsidies to reduce labor costs and to promote exports, and maybe even tax cuts to please Republicans. He told a Labor Day crowd in Detroit a few years ago that he wants to match the more than 1 million construction workers with an infrastructure-related rebuilding program to improve the nation’s roads and bridges. That is an improvement over his efforts to date, but it falls far short of the 20-plus million jobs we need.
So what should be done? Well, the three of us (and others) have long proposed a longer term solution to deal with all of the Detroits that are out there: The government could serve as the “employer of last resort” under a job guarantee program modeled on the WPA (the Works Progress Administration, in existence from 1935 to 1943 after being renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939) and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942). The program would offer a job to any American who was ready and willing to work at the federal minimum wage, plus legislated benefits. No time limits. No means testing. No minimum education or skill requirements.
The program would operate like a buffer stock, absorbing and releasing workers during the economy’s natural boom-and-bust cycles. In a boom, employers would recruit workers out of the program; in a slump the safety net would allow those who had lost their jobs to continue to work to preserve good habits, making them easier to re-employ when activity picked up. The program would also take those whose education, training or job experience was initially inadequate to obtain work outside the program, enhancing their employability through on-the-job training. Work records would be maintained for all program participants and would be available for potential employers. Unemployment offices could be converted to employment offices, to match workers with jobs in the program, and to help private and public employers recruit workers.
Funding for the job guarantee program must come from the federal government—and the wage should be periodically adjusted to reflect changes in the cost of living and to allow workers to share in rising national productivity so that real living standards would rise—but the administration and operation of the program should be decentralized to the state and local level. Registered not-for-profit organizations could propose projects for approval by responsible offices designated within each of the states and U.S. territories as well as the District of Columbia. Then the proposals should be submitted to the federal office for final approval and funding. To ensure transparency and accountability, the Labor Department should maintain a website providing details on all projects submitted, all projects approved and all projects started.
To avoid simple “make-work” employment, project proposals could be evaluated on the following criteria: (a) value to the community; (b) value to the participants; (c) likelihood of successful implementation of project; (d) contribution to preparing workers for employment outside the program.
The program would take workers as they were and where they were, with jobs designed so that they could be performed by workers with the education and training they already had, but it would strive to improve the education and skills of all workers as they participated in the program. Proposals would come from every community in America, to employ workers in every community. Project proposals should include provisions for part-time work and other flexible arrangements for workers who need them, including but not restricted to flexible arrangements for parents of young children.
That’s the approach we would take on behalf of all of the Detroits out there.”
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/07/a-plan-for-all-the-detroits-out-there.html
First unlike your need to control that persons life it is up to them the job path they want to follow. It is up to them decide what job they want to be educated for, it is up to them to make their life choices, I understand liberals have a need to be hand held all through life but trust me people are able to make choices in their lives.
“First unlike your need to control that persons life it is up to them the job path they want to follow.”
Beserke, thrilled to learn that you’re a “closet-lib.” Since you put so much emphasis on individual liberty, you’re clearly pro-marriage equality and pro-choice. God Bless you.
Beserke, you wrote: “It is up to them decide what job they want to be educated for,”
There are these things called unions. We have things called medical schools, law schools, schools of engineering, finance/accounting/CPA, computer science, nursing, tenured faculty …..
Those schools help RESTRICT the SUPPLY of people who get access to the education that leads to credentialing for those unions. That’s known as capitalism. It’s the laws of Supply and Demand. If you want to put a floor underneath your wages, you join a union. Just because you take Pre-med classes, does not automatically mean you’ll get accepted to Medical school….
Now for someone who was unable to join any of the above unions, what are their “life choices?”
Is that a Beserkely term or did it originate somewhere else?
it is up to them to make their life choices, I understand liberals have a need to be hand held all through life but trust me people are able to make choices in their lives.
Berkley Conservative.
With all due respect you’re a dumbass. If everyone could make life choices about their job and accrue wealth then who would work in factories, retail, fast food, etc? Who? Not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer or in your case, probably, a small town banker with a greedy streak and a distorted worldview. Who will make and sell the things people like you need to have your successful career? Teenagers? Chinese teenagers? We’ll all be IT specialists over here in the states?
It gets tiresome trying to ground you idiots in reality again and again and again.
Exactly Steve not everyone can be educated and we need people to work those jobs some pay better than others that’s how it works glad you understand that reality