“Chicken, coffee and some fries, now it’s time to organize! Burgers, nuggets and a coke, workers’ rights are not a joke!” As fast food workers walked out in cities across the United States in a campaign for $15 an hour and the right to organize, workers in Seattle took a stand against wage theft Aug. 1 with a dramatic rush hour action in front of a downtown McDonald’s at 3rd and Pine,organized by Good Jobs Seattle. Eight people were arrested while blocking the street in a civil disobedience action. Those arrested were cited and released later that evening.
Workers and their supporters from the community started the action picketing in the intersection near Westlake Park at 4th and Pine. At about 5 PM, they marched one block to the McDonald’s where the eight activists sat down in the street. The other marchers circled around them and held a spirited rally against wage theft.
Rahwa Habte of One America chaired the rally. She spoke about the now infamous “McBudget.”
“So who here has read in the news about the ‘Mcbudget?’ A Mcbudget is a budget that the Mcdonalds corporation has created to help their minimum wage workers budget money to make it from day to day. That budget, some of the suggestions include getting a second job. It includes zero dollars for food! If you don’t think thats right say , ‘that aint right!’”
Habte explained what wage theft is: “Some workers are not even making the legal minimum wage. Some workers are being forced to work through breaks and then not getting paid for them. Some workers’ hours that they work just aren’t matching up with the amount of money in their paycheck.
“That money that should be going to feed them and their families, that should be going towards rent, that should be going to house and clothe them, is instead going into the pockets of corporations. “
Fast food workers tell their stories
Fermin said: “I’m just here just like everyone else, to make noise and tell the government, tell everyone what’s going on here. We’re getting stolen from by these corporations, our money that is supposed to go towards school, towards family, towards ourselves. Sometimes we have to skip meals because we don’t have enough money to pay for our own food. That’s messed up.”
Josh from Jimmy Johns exclaimed: “We deserve to be paid a living wage. We deserve the rights that are guaranteed to us by the laws. We deserve not to have to call our friends and family for a place to live when we get our hours cut and we can’t pay our rent. And we deserve to be treated with the decency and respect that the owners of our businesses are treated with.
“Every day when I go to work, me and my coworkers at Jimmy Johns see eachother get denied breaks, have our hours cut on the spot, and are fired for whatever they want. This is unacceptable. And we deserve to be treated better. “
Coulson from Starbucks explained “You know I guess I’m a little bit lucky. I’ve got rice at home. I’ve got food. You know why? I have food stamps. I shouldn’t have food stamps when I’m working a job. I’m working as hard as I can.”
Amanda, an Arbys employee said “I can’t afford nothing, I can’t afford to move out on my own, I have 11 roommates and I get paid $9.19. And they still taking money out of my paycheck, out of that $9.19, and that ain’t right. Wage theft is wrong and we ain’t gonna be quiet until something changes.”
Ryan works at a Wendy’s in Ballard. He said: “I’ve doing fast food since I was 17 years old, I’m 21 now, guess what I still haven’t been able to afford: enough to save up for college. Most people say, hey, you want a better job, go to college and get a better job. Guess what, I can’t afford to do so and unless something is done, I will never be able to do so.”
A Subway worker named Carlos explained, “To be very honest, for me working in Subway, they liked me at the beginning, they treated me very good in a lot of different ways, because I am the kind of person who likes to do my job very good, I had my documentation too, but something I didn’t like was how they were treating people other than me, most of the people other than me were not getting overtime hours, and that is not just, it should not be happening, because people should get overtime, they should get a raise if they have been working five years in a place.
Speaking about customer service, Carlos added, “When a customer goes inside a Subway or a Mcdonalds, a customer is like you. Because in one way, they have a job and they go there to eat, so you need to give to them the best customer service you can give to them, because they deserve it. They don’t have the blame, the corporations do, they employ us. Something sad about corporations is that they just care about the money they get, they don’t care about how people [are]doing, they just push and push and push and they don’t care about the people inside.”
After the workers told their stories, the police began to arrest the eight people doing civil disobedience. Protesters chanted: “Wage theft is a crime, pay your workers or do the time” and “We heard, we saw, what you did is against the law.”
As the eight activists were driven away in a police van, organizers vowed to continue the struggle against wage theft and for a decent living for fast food workers.
