How low-wage service workers are changing the face of labor

from In These Times:



Thank You, Strike Again
How low-wage service workers are changing the face of labor.

BY David Moberg


[font size="1"]At the height of the December 2012 shopping season, 21 low-wage workers and supporters blocked traffic on the Magnificent Mile, Chicago's premier retail strip, demanding fair wages. (Courtesy of the WOCC)[/font]


As a worker at The Protein Bar, a quick-service eatery in Chicago’s glitzy North Michigan Avenue shopping district, Amie Crawford is very important to America’s unions: Even though she doesn’t belong to one, she may be a harbinger of new life for the labor movement at a time when even friends are preparing its obituary.

Last year, Crawford joined the “Fight for 15” campaign, a labor and community-supported project that aims to improve conditions for workers in Chicago’s central business districts. The campaign demands a $15 minimum wage and the right to form unions without interference from management.

Crawford recruited other fast food and retail workers to join neighborhood marches and helped form a workers’ association, Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago. On April 24, she and several hundred workers from about 30 businesses went on strike, cheered on by community groups like Arise Chicago, a faith-based worker center. The next day, members of these groups accompanied the strikers back to their jobs to shield them from potential retaliation. Crawford, empowered by the Chicago strike, volunteered a few days later to join Fight for 15 strikers in Milwaukee, one of seven cities where the campaign has taken hold, along with Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Detroit, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

These strikes have been the defining tactic of a new movement of low-wage service workers that has gained momentum in 2013. Small groups of workers have launched sudden strikes against big chains such as Wal-Mart and McDonald’s, as well as small employers such as car washes, laundries and taxi companies. In many cases, only a minority of employees were involved, sometimes from multiple workplaces. The strikes have typically been sudden and short, lasting just long enough to broadcast their message. A few campaigns have won union recognition; more have won small victories like a pay raise or a scheduling change. But taken together, the campaigns have surprised experts like Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University, who says she could not have imagined such an upsurge even two years ago. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15235/thank_you_strike_again/