快餐店工人酝酿罢工 声浪席卷全美

据美国《华盛顿邮报》报道，美国大约100个城市的快餐店工人酝酿在近日举行大罢工，要求将最低工资提高至每小时15美元。

这场抗议始于2017年11月，当时，纽约市内30家快餐店的大约200名员工举行了罢工。从那时起，罢工运动席卷全美，规模逐渐扩大，要求为在零售连锁店、联邦承包项目工作的低收入人群增加薪水。

据调查，快餐店所有者的代表们表示他们支付不起一般工人的工资，虽然这些工人的时薪几乎不到9美元。餐饮业激烈的价格竞争，使得快餐连锁店的利润空间越来越小。

在威明顿市，一位43岁在汉堡王工作的父亲本杰明·亨特表示：“我们现在的工资实在不够用。” 他还表示，他每小时赚7.25美元，他的妻子是汉堡王的值班经理，每小时赚9美元。他们的家庭需要靠医疗补助和食物救济券过活。亨特说：“你说谁能指望那点工资过活？”

Fast-food workers are poised to walk off the job in 100 cities Thursday, the latest action in a nationwide push for a $15-an-hour wage.

Organizers said Thursday’s one-day job action will be backed by protests in 100 other cities by social justice groups that support the fast-food workers’ demands.

“There is a huge amount of support and enthusiasm for this,” said Ezra Tempko of the Delaware chapter of the Americans for Democratic Action, which is supporting workers who plan to walk out in Wilmington, Del. “The only push back is that folks were worried about what repercussions there might be for workers.”

The protests began in November 2017, when about 200 fast-food workers walked away from their jobs at 30 restaurants in New York City. Since then, the walkouts have expanded across the country and joined with a broader movement to increase pay for low-wage employees of retail chains and federal contractors, among others.

“The workers realized that the only way they could gain something was by taking dramatic action,” said Kendall Fells, organizing director for Fast Food Forward, which helped organize the initial New York walkout.

Organizers say few workers have been punished for the walkouts and that some have even been rewarded with slightly higher pay and more regular shifts. Also, several states and localities have raised their minimum wages. (On Tuesday, the D.C. Council endorsed a $3.25 hike in the District’s minimum wage, to $11.50 an hour. The measure needs final approval from the council and the D.C. mayor.)

President Obama has endorsed raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10 an hour after previously calling for an increase to $9.

Still, the wage proposal has not progressed in Congress, despite strong support in public opinion polls, and widespread wage increases have proved elusive. Representatives of fast-food restaurant owners say that they cannot afford to pay rank-and-file workers — who earn a median wage of just under $9 an hour, according to one study — substantially more because of fierce price competition, which typically leaves franchisees operating on thin profit margins.

The walkouts, which are backed by organized labor including the Service Employees International Union, have attracted widespread attention while spotlighting the nation’s widening economic inequality and the rapid growth in low-wage jobs.

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that seven of the 10 fastest-growing occupations over the next decade will be in jobs that traditionally have paid low wages, such as home health aides, store clerks, food preparation workers and laborers.

A study funded by Fast Food Forward and released this fall by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Illinois found that taxpayers are spending nearly $7 billion a year to supplement the wages of fast-food workers through programs including food stamps, Medicaid and the earned-income tax credit.

“What we’re getting paid is not enough,” said Benjamin Hunter, 43, a married father of one who works at a Burger King in Wilmington.

He said he earns $7.25 an hour and that his wife makes $9 an hour working as a Burger King shift manager. The family receives Medicaid and food stamps. “Who can actually live on what they are paying?” he asked.