Fast-Food Workers Walk Out Across NYC, Demand Higher Wages
Newly formed strike-organizer Fast Food Forward is coordinating a protest with hundreds of the city's fast-food workers today, beginning with the 280 Madison Avenue McDonald's at 6:30 this morning, where employees walked out demanding better wages. 
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More strikes are expected today at noon in Penn Station and on Brooklyn's Fulton Street, and later this afternoon in Times Square.
Fast Food Forward has 40 full-time staff members working to get fast-food chains like McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell, and KFC, to increase wages to $15/hour and to allow employees to unionize without interference.
Currently, the average pay for fast-food workers in New York is closer to $9 an hour (which works out to around $18,500 a year for a full-time worker). The campaign points out that many of the 50,000 men and women who work in the city's fast food restaurants full-time must rely on public assistance programs to supplement their low incomes and poor benefits, especially those with families.
A spokesman for Domino's told the Times that most employees aren't interested in unions: "People who are doing this part time, seasonally or as they work their way through college don't find much interest in membership." But Linda Archer, a part-time cashier who has worked at the McDonald's on 42nd Street for three years and earns about $11,000 a year, said she hoped a union could help get her the pay she deserves, affordable health insurance, and paid sick days.
[NYTimes]
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