what the primitive loves is simple

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025487066

Oh my.

In case anyone's forgotten, today's the day.

alcibiades_mystery (30,626 posts)    Thu Sep 4, 2014, 08:18 AM

The Fast Food Strikes and the Great Recession (September 4 Walkouts)

Fast food workers in up to 150 cities will be walking out in mini-strikes today, protesting for higher wages and the right to unionize. The resumption of the Fast Food Strikes, organized locally and through excellent umbrella orgs like Fast Food Forward, is making news across the media today, with non-violent civil disobedience predicted in some areas.
 
For those of you who eat fast food (I don't), solidarity on this day is not a bad idea.
 
But these strikes - now becoming one of today's central labor issues, point up a phenomenon on DU, I think.
 
We often hear that economic recovery from the Great Recession is illusory, that job gains are in low wage and service sectors like...well...fast food. There's good evidence to support this critique, so those who make it are, by and large, correct. But the push to organize fast food workers and gain higher pay cannot be separated from that very phenomenon.

As people with formally higher wage jobs and former unionized workers get pushed into the fast food sector, they bring with them the labor consciousness they forged in their past work, and they bring their organizational expertise. That major efforts to organize the fast food sector would emerge as hundreds of thousands of workers are pushed into that sector economically should be no surprise.
 
But it is also a much more productive and promising labor tactic than mere critique of low wage work. Factory work was also once low wage and degrading work - until it wasn't. Every time somebody brings up low wage work in the service sector, we should ask them, "What have you done today to help organize or unionize or support workers in that sector?" What I love about the fast food strikes is simple: Workers are telling capital, it doesn't matter where you put us - we're going to fight for wages and dignity.

Emphasis (bolding) is the primitive's, not mine.

New thread, no primitive responses yet.

[JohnnyReb]

Have they forgotten? It was Bill Clinton that said he was going to take us from an industrial based economy to a service based economy.

How you DUmmies liking those low wage service based jobs?

[USA4ME]

And when fast food places become fully automated and reduce the employees in each location by 70%-80%, I wonder how much the primitives will love it then?

.

[67 Rover]

Chik-Fil-A was busy as usual today and fully staffed.

[Big Dog]

I'll cook at home tonight.

**** you, DUmmies.

[Chris_]

McD's was fully staffed today.  Not a protester in sight.

[thundley4]

McD's was fully staffed today.  Not a protester in sight.

They can only mount their protests in large cities that have a lot of SEIU members that are currently unemployed because of their union demands. That or large cities with lots of homeless people to hire for the protests.

[DumbAss Tanker]

They can only mount their protests in large cities that have a lot of SEIU members that are currently unemployed because of their union demands. That or large cities with lots of homeless people to hire for the protests.

Yep...a lot of protestors supplied by SEIU in those locations, damned few of them actual employees of the places being protested.

[diesel driver]

Yep...a lot of protestors supplied by SEIU in those locations, damned few of them actual employees of the places being protested.

Looks good for the local TV news.

Basically, what the DUmmies want is "more".  More government, more taxes, more regulations, more benefits, more, more, more!  More for ME, none for thee!