Low Wage Workers Strike—Because YOLO

[marmar]

from Dissent magazine:



[font size="1"]Photo by Shelly Ruzicka[/font]

Low Wage Workers Strike—Because YOLO
By Micah Uetricht - April 26, 2013

At 5:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, in a frigid drizzle outside Chicago’s main commuter train terminal Union Station, an African-American fast-food worker in his early twenties who was on strike for the day screamed into a bullhorn atop a marble embankment, his voice already hoarse before most of the city was awake. His red baseball cap was backward, and when he turned to face bleary-eyed commuters, I could read what it said: “YOLO.”

I’m not sure if the striker’s choice in headgear for the day was intentional. Given the popularity of the acronym, which stands for “you only live once” and has made its way in youth culture from hip hop videos to resistance to standardized tests, he may wear it often. But the phrase seemed a fitting sentiment for a day in which several hundred nonunion fast-food and retail workers walked off the job in Chicago, organized and backed by a community-labor coalition called Fight for 15 and demanding $15 per hour and a union. They followed fast-food workers in New York City in November and earlier this month, and are leading a new push for service workers making miserably low wages and living in poverty. It could be the burgeoning movement’s new slogan: strike, because… YOLO.

As union membership in heavy industry has steadily declined in recent decades, a handful of unions have begun taking organizing low-wage sectors seriously. There is historical precedent to such efforts, but aside from a few recent efforts, fast food and retail have long been thought of as unorganizable, with the high turnover and fragmented workforce making unionization particularly difficult.

But the recent campaigns in New York and Chicago, likely to spread to other cities, indicate that the Service Employees International Union and other unions backing the effort are willing to give organizing these industries a shot, providing the serious staffing and financial resources required to organize an industry so hostile to unions. I spent Wednesday and Thursday with these workers in Chicago. While large-scale shifts in fast food and retail appear far off, there was some hope to be found at this week’s strike sites. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/low-wage-workers-strike-because-yolo

[xchrom]

1. YOLO! Nt

[xchrom]

2. Kick

[Laelth]

3. People now feel pressured to hold on to even low-wage fast-food jobs.

That's why they're now more open to unionization. It's a sad testament to the state of labor in America, but it does provide a glimmer of hope.

-Laelth

[leftstreet]

4. DURec