Fight for $15

In over 200 cities across the U.S. and 30 countries worldwide, workers and supporters united in protest to call on corporations to raise wages for not only fast food workers, but also security guards, adjunct professors, home-care aides and other low-wage workers.

I was privileged to walk among the hundreds in Pittsburgh on April 15th as we shut down rush hour traffic in Oakland.  We marched down Forbes Ave. from Bigelow Blvd. to Meyran Avenue where UPMC offices are located and chanted “You Are Not a Charity” (their excuse for not paying employees fairly).  From there we did an about-face to head back up Forbes Ave. stopping for a sit-in protest in front of McDonald’s.  While McDonald’s had closed for the day due to the strike, management was still inside and heard the cries for better treatment of workers.

Sadly, there are still so many in the general public who don’t understand exactly what the Fight for $15 is really about.  This is not a fight against Capitalism, but it is a fight against greedy CEOs that live extravagant lives on the backs of the workers who have made their companies what they are.  What started as an uprising for the fast-food worker has come to stand for a call for all low-wage workers and not just an increase in pay, but a demand for better treatment.  Their wages have not kept pace with the cost of inflation (the $1.60 minimum wage in the 1960’s would equate to over $10/hr today).  To make matters worse, workers are often forced to punch out, and remain at work until the employer decides they are needed again.  Then the employer forces them to punch back in to work the rush, all for the convenience of the employer.  Workers injured on the job are routinely not given proper medical treatment.  Workers describe being told to use items such as mayonnaise or mustard as a salve for a burn.  And of course, the employer hides behind the misnomer that these low-wage workers are all high school teens working their first job.  Due to the fall of the middle-class, the disappearance of decent retirement benefits and the high cost of continuing education, the demographics of these workers range from single moms to retired grandparents.

Yet, there is hope!  Many states have already raised their minimum wage to $15 an hour, independent companies like Gravity Payments, where the CEO cut his own salary to raise his employees to $70,000 annually, and the voices of “we the people”, standing up for what is right for our fellow hard working men and women.  I Believe That We Will Win.

~Melissa