$15 wage protests
© UPI/Barcroft MediaNew York is where the Fight for $15 started, and New York is now the site of a monumental victory that now extends beyond fast-food cooks and cashiers.’
Billboards in Times Square shone bright on Thursday morning as hundreds of workers huddled in front of a nearby McDonald's. The early hour of 6am was not enough to dim the joyous feel of this gathering, taking place just weeks after California and New York became the first states to raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022.

The fight, however, is far from over, say workers whose goal is to secure a $15 minimum wage for all Americans. On Thursday, workers in more than 300 cities across the US were expected to protest to demand a rise in the minimum wage and the right to unionize, which they hope will lead to better working conditions.

The protest is being billed by organizers as the largest one to date, yet the crowd that gathered in Times Square was about half as large as last year's day of action in Brooklyn.

One of the workers joining the crowd in Times Square was Naquasia LeGrand, who works as a manager at a McDonald's in North Carolina. When she started working, she was paid $7.25 an hour. She was recently promoted to a manager and saw her pay go up to $8 an hour, then to $8.15 an hour. Yet still, she says, "it's not enough to make ends meet. I am still $400 short at the end of the month."

It's why on this day of action she made it back to New York, where in 2012 while working at KFC she helped kick off the Fight for $15 movement.

"Right now I am in the South trying to help out and make sure that they win $15, because not only New York and California deserve it. We all deserve it," she said.

Rebecca Cornick, 61, said she had to be in Times Square to keep fighting for workers across the US.

"I am here to support all workers. One by one we are going to knock down every state until they win $15 like we did," she said.

Cornick works at Wendy's making salads and manning the grill. She works full-time and makes $10.50 an hour, but still struggles to make ends meet.

"When I get to $15, it will be enough to make ends meet, but until then it's a struggle," she said. Since she lives in Brooklyn, she should see her minimum wage go up to $15 an hour by 2020. "It feels far away, but the success has given me a little gas to go on. I am really thrilled to have won that fight. I have a lot of hope for the future."

In addition to fighting for a higher minimum wage in other states, Cornick said she would like to see McDonald's workers unionize.

"I will fight for that every day," she said on Thursday. "It's important for us to have dignity on the job. Before we won the $15, I didn't think it was possible, but when we won, that boosted my self-confidence and it made me want to fight even more for the union."

As the workers marched from McDonald's down Broadway, they passed by Forever 21 store where workers danced in support.

"No matter where we work, McDonald's still affects our lives," said Stephanie Rodriguez, who works at a Forever 21 in the Bronx. According to her, McDonald's sets the standard for every major corporation. "I am a member of the Fight for $15 because it's all about workers - about creating an economy that works for us all."

The workers also stopped by a nearby Verizon store, where workers who went on strike over contract negotiations on Wednesday led them in a chant: "What do we fight? Corporate greed. What do we want? A union job."


Comment: 40,000 Verizon workers set to strike Wednesday - decry company's 'shameful' greed


In Oakland, about 500 demonstrators marched from City Hall to a McDonald's, in a protest that focused on low-wage workers' pressing need for higher wages, child care and affordable housing in a market that has among the nation's highest housing costs.

The protests were peaceful, though tensions rose when a marching band, along with about 100 demonstrators, crowded noisily into the lobby of an office building where they asked a housing developer to roll back rent increases.

Robert Reich, a former secretary of labor, led the diverse crowd for part of the more than one-mile walk.

"Fundamentally, the struggle we are engaged in is for human dignity," Reich told the crowd in front of McDonald's. "This is about power. There is no legitimate reason why anybody is working full time and is still in poverty."

Veronic Ochoa, 45, of Hayward works said she came to protest her wages and working conditions at Wendy's. She earns $10 an hour and works shifts as short as two hours. "I have nothing, no insurance, no paid vacation," she said. "I'm sick, it's my problem."

Alvina Wong, 27, a community organizer with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network in Oakland, said she marched for her displaced neighbors. "So many of our community members have been displaced out of Chinatown and Oakland because they can't afford to stay here with the rents rising exponentially all around the Bay Area," she said. "The tenants' issue and gentrification is not separate from workers' issues. It's all a part of a cycle that makes our environment unhealthy."

Katina Richardson, 43, runs a family childcare facility out of her Hayward home. She marched with 15 of her charges, all dressed in yellow, red and blue T-shirts that said "Fight for $15".

"I'm definitely struggling financially. I don't know what's coming next. I have no retirement set up. I don't want work 'til I'm 75," she said.

Labor unions across the US have been a significant part of the Fight for $15 movement.

"New York is where the Fight for $15 started, and New York is now the site of a monumental victory that now extends beyond fast-food cooks and cashiers who won their minimum wage of $15 an hour to millions more New Yorkers," Mary Kay Henry, president of SEIU international, a labor union that has helped fund the movement, said earlier this month.


The US federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since July 2009. In 2014, about 1.3 million workers earned $7.25 an hour while another 1.7 million people earned less thanks to the tipped minimum wage. Tipped minimum wage for workers, such as servers and bartenders, is $2.13 and has not been raised since the 1990s.

Increasing the minimum wage has been on Barack Obama's agenda for a number of years, but thanks to the Republican-held Congress and the opposition from some corners of the business community, there has been little movement on the issue.

"In the absence of congressional action, he has been supportive of states like California and New York that are raising their wages," deputy US labor secretary Chris Lu told the Guardian. "While we are encouraged by what is happening around the country, we still need to raise the federal minimum wage, which is an important floor particularly for the states for which there is no state minimum wage."

Five months ago, the Fight for $15 movement held another day of action this time to get the attention of the presidential hopefuls. Their message? Come get our vote.

So far only one presidential candidate, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, has come out in support of raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

His Democratic rival Hillary Clinton has previously said that people should not have to march in the streets for a living wage, but has yet to support $15 federal minimum wage. Instead, she has come out in support of raising it to $12 an hour by 2020, as proposed by Democrats in Congress.

Low-wage workers are not the only ones taking to the streets of New York this week. Both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates - businessman Donald Trump, Texas senator Ted Cruz, Ohio governor John Kasich - have been making rounds in New York hoping that when when New Yorkers go to the voting booth next Tuesday they cast a vote in their favor.

Labor leaders have warned politicians not to turn a blind eye to the Fight for $15 movement.

"Both those who have won wage increases and those who haven't are going to bring their power to the ballot box this November to make sure candidates respond to their demand for $15 and union rights," said Henry, of SEIU.