Fast Food, Retail Employees Fight For $15/Hour Wage
By Chuck Sudo in News on Nov 19, 2012 4:40PM
Last Thursday hundreds of fast food restaurant and retail employees took to downtown streets in an attempt to organize into a union and fight for a wage of $15 an hour.
The Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago, which currently states the average wage of these employees at $9.80 an hour, say a raise to $15 would allow these employees to move into better neighborhoods, send their children to better schools, and have a better shot of attaining that already elusive brass ring of the middle class. As Eric Zorn noted, this could be a quixotic endeavor. Illinois Retail Merchants Association president and CEO David Vite told Zorn raising employee wages would force merchants to cut workers hours or raise prices to remain competitive, even though merchants overall costs would increase only 2.6 percent to meet the call for a $15 an hour raise.
WOCC will have another "Fight for 15" protest along the Mag Mile Friday, when all those holiday shoppers will be around to see it.
All Photos by Chicagoist Flickr Pool contributor Rotating Frame.