Low wage workers staged a die-in outside of an Upper West Side McDonald’s on Wednesday afternoon as part of the Fight For $15’s efforts in calling for wages of $15/hour and a union. Jackie Martinick, a die-in participant and a prep cook at a New York City Wendy’s, described the realities of living on a fast food paycheck. “I have to have other workers support me, and by that I mean taxpayers," Martinick told us. "I live in a shelter, and my pay—I can’t eat three times a day like I’m supposed to. I can’t afford it. My check is gone within seven days, and my pay period is every two weeks. I’m not surviving.”
Since starting just two years ago, Fight for $15 has grown from the demands of 200 fast food workers to a nationwide movement (thanks to the help of the country's largest service employees union). On Tax Day, strikes reached 236 cities and spanned multiple industries, including food service, academia, home-care, and retail.
Employees, activists, and elected officials at the die-in protest, part of a day-long effort that organizers called the "largest-ever mobilization of underpaid workers," sought to highlight the financial and physical violence faced by the city’s poor, many of whom struggle to live on the state's minimum wage of $8.75/hour. As speaker Karl Kumodzi put it, “Economic justice is racial justice.”
Flavia Cabral, attending the protest with her two grandchildren, Jeremy and Amelia, says she does not make enough money at her job in a McDonald’s kitchen to have left the pair with a babysitter. Like Martinick, Cabral is frustrated that other Americans are the ones forced to make up for her company’s poor pay.
“All of those people you see right now, they don’t want to live on the system. We want to work and pay taxes. We want to live the way human beings are supposed to live.” Cabral says that her low wages puts undue stress on her family: “I have a daughter, she’s ready to go to college, but we need money. She has to decide work or going to college—that’s not fair.”
(Gothamist)
A recent study estimated that companies like McDonald's and Walmart, whose workers are forced to enroll in public assistance, cost taxpayers $153 billion a year.
Jorel Ware, a crewmember at a midtown McDonald’s, has been with Fight for $15 “since the beginning,” and organized Wednesday’s event. Ware stressed the importance of combining social justice with economic justice, explaining that both issues come down to equality and respect.
“If the companies had respect for their workers, we wouldn’t be out here. If the cops had respect towards people of color, then we wouldn’t be out here,” he said after telling protestors to “rise up” at the end of the die-in. Ware added: “If I didn’t have a mother that loves me very much, I’d be in trouble. I can’t buy anything for myself.”
While McDonald’s recently increased wages by 10%, this will affect only the employees in restaurants, and not franchises—leaving 750,000 workers, the vast majority, without a raise. In January, Governor Cuomo announced his plan to raise the minimum wage in New York City to $11.50/hour by 2016, while cities like Seattle and San Francisco have already moved to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour.
A recent report from Comptroller Scott Stringer showed that raising the minimum wage to $15/hour in New York City by 2019 would "boost consumer spending, lessen the burden on social assistance programs, and benefit students."
Shantel Walker, another die-in participant, has been with Papa Johns since 2003, and currently makes $9.00/hour.
“My paycheck shows what the company thinks about me,” she said after the protest ended. “I think that these people should have stepped up a long time ago, and I think it’s time for the leaders of this country to make a change as well.”
