Thousands of Americans who work in fast-food restaurants walked off their jobs for a day again earlier this month, once more disrupting breakfast, lunch, and dinner hours in neighborhoods around the country.
Their strikes have provoked a broad debate over minimum wage levels at local and national levels, which is long overdue.
But that’s just part of what this movement is about. From the beginning, the fast-food cashiers and cooks who launched the “Fight for $15” declared that they have a vision for how they can turn their jobs into work that sustains their families and frees them from depending on public assistance: a union.
By: Adele M. Stan
As the current term of the U.S. Supreme Court opens this autumn, looming on the docket is Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case designed to decimate public-sector unions. While it may not come to that—even the most knowledgeable Court-watchers are unsure how the justices will rule—the stakes are high. A decision is expected before the term ends in June.
A few weeks ago, I started an online petition to a group called the Center for Individual Rights — an organization backed by the Koch brothers, other right-wing 1 percenters, and even white supremacists — to tell them to stop attacking working people and our right to join a union.
I wasn’t shocked when over 100,000 people signed my petition, and I wasn’t shocked at the response my brothers and sisters got from the Center for Individual Rights when they tried to deliver the petition signatures today.