Boston Globe: On the front line of the fight for $15

The fast-food workers took turns detailing the indignities they endured on the job: taking the subway to work only to be sent home before a shift started, making $7.25 an hour after 10 years on the job, getting fired for eating a chicken nugget on the clock.

Then a man rolled up his sleeves, revealing burns from making french fries. Within moments, everyone in the room was doing the same. Their arms were covered in fresh wounds and old scars, from grease, from the grill, from hot coffeepots.

This moment of solidarity, at a meeting in New York in September 2012, would help spark the “Fight for $15,” a union-backed effort to raise the minimum wage that has grown into a national movement. It has led to increases to $15-an-hour in at least seven cities and 26 employers, including Google and Boston Medical Center, and helped inject the issue of income inequality into the presidential campaign.

It has also added to pressure on other companies to raise wages, including Walmart Stores Inc., which last month increased pay to an average of $13.38 an hour for full-time workers.

full: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/18/front-line-fight-for/6B5Ji39ABqt29Z3Guw5iAP/story.html