Workers at fast-food restaurants nationwide will stage walk-outs in protest of what they call the "poverty wages," they receive from their jobs at McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell and others, Thursday.
"Hey hey, ho ho, poverty wages gotta go!" about 200 Chicago residents chanted at the Rock N Roll McDonald's store in the Illinois city's River North neighborhood, while holding colored balloons and picket signs.
50 U.S. cities are slated to participate in the demonstrations, which they hope will bolster up support to put pressure on corporations to raise wages.
Rallies that began last year in New York have now spread to Boston, Chicago, Denver, San Diego and Indianapolis, according to the Service Employees International Union-an organization providing advice to the non-unionized strikers.
Fast-food workers make an average of $9 an hour-a wage they say is impossible to support any kind of lifestyle. They are currently calling upon corporations to more than double the federal salary of $7.25, demanding workers receive payment closer to $15 an hour instead.
"What the workers are trying to do is hold the corporations accountable," President of SEIU Mary Kay Henry told Bloomberg.
Some of these corporations, including Burger King Worldwide Inc. told protestors that they are not responsible for wages, and franchisees who own branches of the fast food restaurants dictate the pay scale.
But for Henry, the smaller guys aren't the issue.
"Franchisees are not part of the problem," she told Bloomberg. "We want to go to the source, which is the multinational corporations that own these franchise relationships."
Spokesperson for McDonald's Ofelia Casillas said that the workers were missing the point.
"The story promoted by the individuals organizing these events does not provide an accurate picture of what it means to work at McDonald's," she said in an email to Bloomberg.
But for the workers, no picture can stand in the place of real life.
27-year-old Antoine McKinney said he has been working at Wendy's restaurants in Chicago for two years, but still scrambles to pay for his 4-year-old son with an $8.35 an hour wage.
"I struggle paying my bills," McKinney said at this morning's rally in Chicago, where demonstrators donned red shirts bearing the message, "Fight for $15." "Even if we were getting paid $10 an hour, that would be better."
