A fine year end list

This one snuck in my e-mail today--it's a list from Low Pay is Not OK of the top 8 reasons why 2014 was a good year for workers.

There's still a long, long way to go in the fight for economic equality, but you can't win if you don't fight back and an awful lot of folks puts their and their families' livelihoods on the line this year to make this a better country and bring a little more economic certainty to the lives of America's working class.

And their work put a lot more distance between hopeless and hopeful for low wage workers.

God bless them all.

Peace,
emaycee

The whites of their eyes

Realizing that their one day strikes weren't enough, fast food workers voted unanimously in Chicago this past weekend to begin using civil disoedience in their quest for $15 an hour and the right to form a union.

This is step number two (though still on a small scale) in working class Americans fight for a living wage and to regain their seat at the table in America's economic well-being amidst our current plutocracy.

Hope it's successfull--because their third step is to go full French Revolution on their asses.

Peace,
emaycee

Courage personified

Over one hundred McDonald's employees, fighting for a living wage of $15 and the right to unionize, were arrested outside of McDonald's corporate headquarters on Wednesday while protesting.

As you watch the above video, note that when the McDonald's workers are arrested, they are in a sea of police in riot gear.  For fuck's sake, these folks flip burgers and run cash registers for a living--they're hardly the Third Reich.  You'd think, too, that the police would realize that the 1% who demanded their presence to protect their worthless asses are just as hungry to gut police pay and benefits.

McDonald's CEO Don Thompson claimed today that his company pays "fair and competitive wages."  There's nothing "fair" about $7.25 an hour--people with families to support don't risk their jobs when they're getting paid a decent wage.

But they do when they're working their asses off and still living below the poverty level--as a great man once said, when you aint got nothin', you got nothin' to lose.

Peace,
emaycee

Sometimes nothing is one cool hand

Fast Food Workers in Detroit today became the fourth group in a major American city (New York, Chicago, and St. Louis were one, two, and three) to strike for a living wage.

I have a friend who has been in retail nearly as long as I have (30 years) and she says that anytime a business she has worked for puts out a charity jar, she could always count on the poor to find a few cents to help out, and the rich to turn their noses in the air.

Leave it to those who have the least and the most to lose to lead the way in fighting for a better economic life for all of us.  Submission to the powers that be can be a pretty bitter taste, especially when you make your living making food for people, and that livelihood is so poor that you can't afford to eat without food stamps.

$15,400 a year (full-time--and good luck with that--at minimum wage) is a slap in the face to hard working people and it seems the time has come for them to slap back.

Good for them.

Peace,
emaycee