Fast Food Worker Strikes Go Global

Getty ImagesFast food workers campaigning for higher wages on May 7 in New York City.

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Yesterday, fast food workers holding a preference conference outside a Manhattan McDonald's announced plans for a nationwide strike on May 15, when employees of McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, and other fast food giants will push for better treatment and $15 per hour pay. The strikes won't be limited to the U.S., the group said--on the same date, they'll be joined by thousands of workers across six continents.

"We've gone global," said Ashley Cathey, a McDonald's worker from Memphis, Tennessee. "Our fight has inspired workers around the world to come together."

The international agenda includes protests, teach-ins, and even a series of flash mobs inside five McDonald's restaurants in the Philippines. Japan alone will be the site of 30 protests; the UK will have protests in 20 different cities.

The planned strikes push back against more than just low wages. Hungry for Justice organizer Julie Sherry, who said the average fast food worker in the U.K. makes the equivalent of $8.50 per hour, described the enforced "zero-hours" contracts the company uses to boost profits. Under these contracts, workers have no guaranteed hours, but can be called into work at any time. According to Sherry, 90 percent of the company's U.K. workforce lives on these contracts.

"In the UK, we are at the beginning of a battle to take on the multinationals dominating the fast food industry, ensure workers know their rights, and open the door to organizing fast food workers into unions, and it's fantastic to be a part of a global movement," said Sherry.

Some of the foreign protestors are striking in solidarity with the U.S. workers. Louise Marie Rantzau, a McDonald's worker in Denmark, said she makes $21 an hour, and was surprised to hear how hard U.S. employees have to fight for just $15.

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 was last raised in 2009. While some states and localities have raised their minimum wages recently, attempts to boost the federal minimum wage seem unlikely to succeed in Congress.

The strikes, in the U.S. and abroad, will challenge the notion that fast food workers consist mainly of teenagers looking for extra cash, rather than parents struggling to raise families on minimum (or minimal) wage.

They'll also make a case that these are the jobs that are driving economic recovery. Michael Evangelist, author of a recent National Employment Law Project report, described fast food as the industry driving the bulk of low-end job growth. In that case, corporations have an added impetus to make these jobs better.

"This is just the beginning of an unprecedented international fast food worker movement," said Ron Oswald, general secretary of the IUF, a federation comprised of 396 trade unions in 126 countries representing a combined 12 million workers. "This highly profitable global industry better take note."

Filed under: Employment News

Tags: burger king, fast food, fast food strikes, kfc, mcdonalds, minimum wage

Obama hangs with Spielberg, Springsteen at benefit

LOS ANGELES (AP) - President Obama shared a table with Steven Spielberg and Bruce Springsteen at a benefit dinner, but broke away to chat with Barbra Streisand and Samuel L. Jackson.
The president was the guest of honor Wednesday at a fundraising gala celebrating the USC Shoah Foundation, which Spielberg established 20 years ago to collect video testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides. Inspired by the making of "Schindler's List," the video archive Spielberg created now includes more than 50,000 personal accounts and is available to schools across the globe.
"As long as we fail to learn, our work will be urgent work," he said of the foundation's mission. "This institute exists because we know that the future can always be rewritten."
Obama accepted the foundation's Ambassador for Humanity award at the private event at the Century Plaza Hotel. Springsteen provided musical entertainment, tucking his black tie into his white shirt to perform two songs with his acoustic guitar.
"I think anyone who has a boss wishes it was you," Spielberg told the stalwart rocker, who sang "Promised Land" and "Dancing in the Dark." The filmmaker called Springsteen "this nation's hardest working lyrical poet for our common humanity."
Conan O'Brien hosted the event, speaking in Yiddish and teasing the President for the traffic snarls he causes when visiting Los Angeles.
"You left Washington six hours ago, but I left Burbank seven hours ago," O'Brien joked.
Liam Neeson, who played Oskar Schindler in Spielberg's 1994 film, opened the evening.
But it was two non-famous women who left the audience most inspired. San Diego high school teacher Michelle Sadrena Clark recited a poem about how the Shoah Foundation's work enriches her curriculum and connects her students to history.
"Your institute has literally changed my teaching and my life," she said. Several of her students attended the gala, where they showed guests the multimedia projects they developed using survivor testimonies. They were also introduced to the president.
Celina Biniaz was one of the Jews Schindler saved. At 13, she worked in his factory, cleaning the machinery with her small hands. Now a grandmother whose story is included among the Holocaust testimonies, she said, "Oskar Schindler gave me my life, but Steven Spielberg gave me my voice."
Obama said that genocide survivors and the families they've created are "the ultimate rebuke to evil and the ultimate expression of love and hope."
"You are an inspiration to every single one of us," he said.

Woman delivers triplets at 47; babies go home

 http://www.aol.com/article/2014/05/06/woman-delivers-triplets-at-47-babies-go-home/20881388/?ncid=webmail20

 

MIAMI (AP) - Sharon Lewis was already a mother of two when she found out she was pregnant again. This time it was with triplets - at the age of 47, and without fertility treatments.
"Now the tears rolled because it was unexpected," she said Tuesday, moments before she was to take her three new children home, just in time for Mother's Day.
Lewis, a school cafeteria monitor with a 25-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son, said she was not looking to get pregnant again at her age. "But I was good. Once I grasped it, I was OK."
Dylan, Denere and Denard slept while Lewis and her doctors addressed the news media at Holtz Children's Hospital at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center. Each of the triplets weighed about 2 lbs. when born March 18. Since then, they have all been cared for at the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.
Lewis developed high blood pressure during her pregnancy, so her doctors decided to deliver the triplets early, at 30 weeks. They said it was rare for a woman her age not only to get pregnant but also to have multiple births spontaneously, without hormone or fertility treatments.
"It was a miracle she got pregnant. It was a miracle she got three. And all of them are healthy and normal and she is fine," said Dr. Salih Y. Yasin, an obstetrician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies and delivering multiples, as he held a sleeping Denere in his arms. "Getting pregnant is 1 percent, but to be twins it's probably 1 percent of that. Triplets is 1 percent of 1 percent of that."
Lewis said she was looking forward to bonding with her babies at home.
"I felt that it was nobody but God that blessed my womb at 47. I do believe he brought me to it, he'll bring me through it," she said with a wide smile

Obama: US will help Arkansas rebuild after storms

VILONIA, Ark. (AP) - Surveying the remnants of nature's destructive power in the country's midsection, President Barack Obama pledged Wednesday to residents of tornado-ravaged Arkansas communities that their government will stand with them until they finish rebuilding.

Obama said he wanted to visit this small city about a half-hour north of Little Rock to make sure those grieving the loss of loved ones, their homes and treasured possessions know that they will not be forgotten.

"I'm here to make sure that they know and that everybody who's been affected knows that the federal government's going to be right here until we get these communities rebuilt," Obama said after walking through a subdivision in which just six of its 56 homes had any part still standing after storms tore across the state on April 27, killing 15 people.

"When something like this happens to a wonderful community like this one, it happens to all of us," he said.

Obama first surveyed the rubble by air, peering down from the windows of his helicopter onto a subdivision of short cul-de-sacs that was destroyed. The still-visible rubble was evidence of the random but surgical devastation a twister is capable of.

After meeting privately with grieving families, emergency workers and local officials, Obama set out on foot through a section of Vilonia, where residents felt a sense of deja vu. Four people died after a tornado hit Vilonia in 2011.

"This town has seen more than its fair share of tragedy," Obama observed, speaking in front of the wreckage of destroyed homes. The sunny afternoon beneath a nearly cloudless sky was a sharp contrast to the dark storms that struck less than two weeks ago. "But folks here are tough, they look out for one another and that's been especially clear over the past week."

Obama said there is a lot of cleanup and rebuilding that remains to be done to make Vilonia whole again "but I'm here to remind them they're not doing this work alone. Your country's going to be here for you. We're going to support you every step of the way."

"I could not be more impressed by the spirit of the community that is here," he said.

Obama made the first visit of his presidency to Arkansas while opening a three-day trip to California to raise money for the Democratic Party, accept an award from a foundation created by movie director Steven Spielberg and discuss his energy policy.

His quick layover of several hours also has political implications for the state. Among the elected officials accompanying him on the tour was Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, who is seeking re-election to a third term against Republican Rep. Tom Cotton in one of the most expensive and closely watched Senate races in the country. Neither faces an opponent in the May 20 primary.

Obama also was joined by Gov. Mike Beebe and U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin.

Pryor's willingness to appear with Obama contrasts with other Democrats in difficult races who have chosen to keep the president at arm's length. Obama lost Arkansas in the 2008 and 2012 elections and remains deeply unpopular in the state, polls show.

Republicans have made major gains in Arkansas over the past two elections by tying Democrats to Obama and his policies, particularly the federal health care law. The GOP controls both chambers of the state Legislature and holds all but one of its congressional seats.

The Obama administration has designated four Arkansas counties as major disaster areas because of damage from the storm, part of a violent weather system that killed at least 35 people across the Plains and the South. The twister had winds between 166 mph and 200 mph, the National Weather Service said.

Obama visited a day after his administration released a new report on climate change that attributed severe weather such as hurricanes and droughts to global warming. The report, however, says the effect of climate change on the intensity or frequency of tornadoes is uncertain, and scientists are unsure whether climate change has played a role in recent erratic patterns of tornado activity.

The visit also was the second time in recent weeks that Obama has seen up close the force of nature's destructive power. Late last month, he visited Oso, Washington, where more than 40 people were killed by a massive mudslide in March.