Kevin Clarke
Workers around the country stepped away from their jobs at fast food restaurants and other low-wage sites on Dec. 4 in protests demanding improved wages. They say their wages are too low to support their families and that many as a result rely on government assistance to get by. The typical fast food worker is no longer a teen seeking extra pocket money. Today’s fast-food worker, according to a report by the University of Illinois and the University of California, Berkeley, is typically over 20, often raising a child, and just under 70 percent are the primary wage earners in their families. According to the study, 52 percent of full-time fast food workers qualify for federal assistance at a cost to tax payers of $7 billion a year.
The protestors’ message is timely as income inequality grows and the U.S. middle class staggers. The fast-food workers’ campaign even received an endorsement from President Obama during his address on economic mobility yesterday.
“It’s well past the time to raise a minimum wage that in real terms right now is below where it was when Harry Truman was in office,” the president said. “This shouldn’t be an ideological question. It was Adam Smith, the father of free-market economics, who once said, ‘They who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.’ And for those of you who don’t speak old-English—let me translate. It means if you work hard, you should make a decent living. If you work hard, you should be able to support a family.”
Continue reading Protests Nationwide Seek Living Wage
