fast food workers

New York City fast food workers to get a major new job protection, this week in the war on workers

The New York City Council voted to dramatically strengthen protections for fast food workers with two bills this week, both supported by Mayor Bill de Blasio. The really big deal bill would ban fast food restaurants from firing workers without just cause—that means workers could only (“only”) be fired for performance issues or other serious problems, not just …

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A McDonald’s worker accuses the chain of firing her after she protested against a lack of masks and other safety concerns in a new whistleblower lawsuit.

McDonald’s is facing a whistleblower lawsuit from a former worker, who claims she was fired after protesting the fast-food giant’s safety policies during the pandemic.  On Friday, Maria E. Ruiz Bonilla filed the whistleblower retaliation suit against McDonald’s in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Santa Clara.  Ruiz had …

A McDonald’s worker accuses the chain of firing her after she protested against a lack of masks and other safety concerns in a new whistleblower lawsuit. Read More »

Fast food workers declare victory after McDonald’s withdraws opposition to minimum wage hikes

After six years of strikes, lawsuits, and damning public scrutiny of how the fast food business model relies on taxpayer-subsidized poverty wages, McDonald’s formally withdrew from efforts to block a federal minimum wage hike on Tuesday. The chain will also stop working against minimum wage increases at state and local levels, its executives told lobbying …

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#MeToo Hits Fast Food: Why McDonald’s Workers Are Out on a Historic Strike Today

Workers at McDonald’s are set to walk out of work today in ten U.S. cities: Chicago, St. Louis, Durham, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Orlando and San Francisco. While a string of fast food strikes has hit chains in recent years, this time workers aren’t walking out for higher wages, but for …

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22 Democratic senators want to know how sexual harassment financially impacts women

Twenty-two Democratic senators are calling on the Labor Department to collect additional, better data regarding sexual harassment in the workplace. The senators sent a letter to the department, signed by Sen. Kristen Gillibrand and co-signed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), among others. Not a single …

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The Trump Labor Board Just Made It Harder for Fast-Food Workers to Hold Corporate Bosses Accountable

On December 14, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) overturned a 2015 policy that had made it easier for workers—particularly fast-food workers—to unionize and challenge their employers over unfair labor practices. The Obama-era standard sprung from a 2013 case involving workers attempting to unionize at a recycling plant in Milpitas, Calif. The recycling company, Browning-Ferris …

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Trump’s pick for Labor Secretary is a big ‘screw you’ to the Fight for $15

In an otherwise grim period for the U.S. labor movement, the fast food industry has been a hot spot for organizing activity. For the past four years, the union-backed Fight for 15 movement and allied groups have staged a series of nationwide, day-long strikes and protests in support of higher wages and unionization for fast …

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Beyond the Fight for 15: The Worker-led Fast Food Union Campaign Building Power on the Shop Floor

Last year, at age 17, Eli Fishel moved out of her parents’ house in Vancouver, Washington, squeezing into a three-bedroom apartment with five other roommates. To pay her bills as she finished high school, Fishel landed a job at Burgerville, a fast-food chain with 42 outlets and more than 1,500 employees in the Pacific Northwest. …

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The List of the Fight for $15’s Victories—Tangible and Intangible—Is Getting Longer

  Fast food workers and their allies in New York City, supported by protestors elsewhere around the country, flooded public hearings in New York today with the message that they deserve at least $15 an hour. They testified before a wage board appointed at the behest of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to determine standards …

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Madeline Messa

Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.