Wisconsin fast food workers will join a nationwide strike Thursday to protest for a wage that can support what one activist says is America’s new middle class—service industry employees.
The strike has grown to include fast food workers in 50 cities, including Milwaukee, Madison and Wausau.
Jennifer Epps-Addison, economic justice director for the group Citizen Action of Wisconsin, says ensuring higher wages for fast food workers was part of ensuring a strong middle class as manufacturing fades and service industry jobs become the major source of employment.
One-third of new jobs created in the U.S. is in the service industry, she says.
“At the end of the day people have to understand we have a new American economy and that economy is based on consumerism and service work,” Epps-Addison says. “Why not fight to make sure the jobs that can’t be shipped overseas by the corporations good family-supporting careers?”
She says that contrary to the image of fast food being an industry for teenagers, many are actually supporting families. In Milwaukee, the minimum wage of $7.25 currently applies—a fine wage for a teenager, Epps-Addison says, but says the average age of fast food workers is 28, the majority are women, and many have families to support.
Epps-Addison says she has talked to hundreds of workers around the country in the process of helping organize the strike. She says that not only are low wages a problem, but so is wage theft.
“Many of the workers that I’ve met…are reporting that they’re not only being paid just $7.25 per hour, but on top of that they’ve had their wages stolen from them by their employers,” she says.
Wage theft includes practices such as forcing workers to work off the clock, or take extended, unpaid breaks—in which they’re not allowed to leave—during slow periods.
She says Milwaukee workers came up with the demand for $15 per hour as what they would need to live independently and not rely on government assistance—a common problem for low-wage workers.
“They decided the $15 per hour wage was a fair wage, it was a liveable wage, and it was a wage that would allow them to work with dignity,” Epps-Addison says.
