Durham Fast Food Workers to Strike Tuesday

Durham, NC – A nationwide Fight for $15 Day of disruption Tuesday will include workers in Durham, NC. Strikes by McDonald’s fast-food cooks and cashiers from coast to coast, baggage handlers and cabin cleaners at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, hospital workers in Pittsburgh and other fast-food workers, combined with mass civil disobedience by working Americans across the service economy, are all a part of the nationwide Fight for $15 day of disruption.

Here in Durham, fast-food workers will walk off their jobs at 6 am, demanding $15 and union rights. At 5 pm Durham workers will join fast food workers from across North Carolina and Reverend Barber as they risk arrest in front of a McDonald’s restaurant in Durham.

In addition to the strikes demanding $15 and union rights, the workers will wage their most disruptive protests yet to show they will not back down in the face of newly-elected politicians and newly-empowered corporate special interests who threaten an extremist agenda to move the country to the right.

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The protests, at nearly 20 major airports, which serve 2 million passengers a day, and outside McDonald’s restaurants from Durham to Denver, will underscore that any efforts to block wage increases, gut workers’ rights or healthcare, deport immigrants, or support racism or racist policies, will be met with unrelenting opposition by workers in the Fight for $15.

Galvanized by the election and frustrated with an economy that is rigged for the rich, airport, fast-food, home care, higher education and child care workers organized the massive demonstrations to mark the fourth anniversary of the Fight for $15, a movement that has won raises for 22 million Americans since it started in 2012.

Tuesday, Nov. 29: Schedule of Durham Actions and Events

6 AM: Striking fast food workers and allies to rally outside McDonalds, 3533 Hillsborough Rd, Durham, NC 27705

12 PM: Striking fast food workers and allies to rally outside Governor’s Mansion in Raleigh, NC

5 PM: Striking fast food workers from across NC rally and participate in civil disobedience action with Reverend Barber in Durham, NC McDonalds, 2010 N Roxboro St Durham, NC 27704

Background:

The Fight for $15, launched Nov. 29, 2012, when 200 fast-food workers walked off their jobs at dozens of restaurants across New York City, demanding $15 and the right to form a union without retaliation. Since then it has grown into a global phenomenon that includes fast-food, home care, child care, university, airport, retail, building service and other workers across hundreds of cities and scores of countries. Workers have taken what many viewed as an outlandish proposition – $15/hour– and made it the new labor standard in New York, California, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Home care workers in Massachusetts and Oregon won $15/hour statewide minimum wages and companies including Facebook, Aetna, Amalgamated Bank, JP Morgan Chase and Nationwide Insurance have raised pay to $15/hour or higher. Workers in nursing homes, public schools and hospitals have won $15/hour via collective bargaining.

All told, the Fight for $15 has led to wage hikes for 22 million underpaid workers, including more than 10 million who are on their way to $15/hour.