RI Workers Won’t Back Down on Living Wage, Despite Democrats’ Betrayal

http://www.thenation.com/article/180443/ri-workers-wont-back-down-living-wage-despite-democrats-betrayal


B, a fast-food worker and organizer, speaks at an inter-faith rally for living wages in Providence. June 26, 2014. (CC, Steve Alquist 2014)

Last Tuesday, four women sat in folding chairs on the steps of the Rhode Island State House in Providence and refused to eat. Santa Brito, Mirjaam Parada and Yilenny Ferreras—all Providence hotel workers—and Shelby Maldonado—a city councilwoman from nearby Central Falls—had declared a hunger strike to protest a measure inserted into Rhode Island’s budget that would prohibit local governments from boosting minimum wages for their residents.

Supported by the hotel workers union, Unite Here Local 217, the women said they wouldn’t eat until Governor Lincoln Chafee vetoed the budget.

“I am fighting for the future of my son,” said Brito, who works at the downtown Renaissance Hotel, where she and her co-workers have declared a boycott to protest low wages and poor working conditions. “My neighbors should be able to vote on whether or not the hotel owners should give us a raise.”

At stake was a city ordinance, backed by the union, RI Jobs with Justice, and other community groups, which would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for workers in large hotels. The city council had just voted to put the proposed wage increase on the November ballot.