Fast Food Workers Go On Strike in NYC!

 From Josh Eidelson at Salon:

 "At 6:30 this morning, New York City fast food workers walked off the job, launching a rare strike against a nearly union-free industry. Organizers expect workers at dozens of stores to join the one-day strike, a bold challenge to an industry whose low wages, limited hours and precarious employment typify a growing portion of the U.S. economy."

Photo by Laura Clawson at Daily Kos

Sarah Jaffe had this to say in The Atlantic:

"For so long, a lot of labor and other folks have avoided these industries because they thought they were too low wage, too hard to organize, and now our economy has become an economy of mostly low wage service jobs," Westin said. "It was the same thing when they were organizing factories in the early 1900s. They organized those factories and lifted an entire segment of the population into the middle class. This could happen here. We could lift an entire segment of the US population out of poverty and into the middle class."

 Crossposted from LABORSTRAT:

"And this is the common thematic element of the new organizational efforts we’re seeing take place in the service industries. Both the Walmart strikes and the New York City fast food strikes taking place are very demonstrative. That is to say, they are attempting to expose a contradiction in an industry (very successful companies who compensate workers very minimally) with a very visible, highly publicized action. This is a great way to create a discussion, but the question remains after that discussion begins: what type of organizations, unions, and institutions are we to build which can maintain the energy we’ve produced through activism. What receives this infrastructure being built by organizers? How are resources built, and more importantly, how are victories produced in which workers are not only politically better off, but economically better off?"