Workers in fast food companies McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and others mobilised in the streets at the end of July in seven cities across the US.

They are highlighting miserable wages and working conditions, and demanding the right to form unions in the virtually non-union sector.

The actions took place in New York, Chicago, St Louis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Kansas City and Flint, Michigan. It is likely that the actions will spread in coming weeks.

The context is the aftermath of the financial collapse, the ensuing Great Recession and the anaemic recovery, which have reduced wages while the stock market and profits generally have soared, as has the “pay” (millions and tens of millions of dollars) of executives.

While the official unemployment rate dropped slightly in July to 7.4 percent, the jobs that have been created since the official end of the Great Recession have been mainly in low wage industries like hotels and restaurants.

Poverty wages

A central fact of work life today is that as lower wage occupations have proliferated in the past several years, US workers are increasingly unable to make a decent living at their jobs. Low wage workers work harder and are paid less than similar workers in other advanced capitalist countries.Fast food workers are part of and representative of this growing layer. Many workers in fast food today lost better paying jobs in the recession and its aftermath.

For most, fast food jobs are not just to make a few extra dollars, but are the sole source of income. For many, these wages must support families at poverty levels.

Keith Bullard from Detroit explained why he joined the action in an email to the Huffington Post: “This morning, I walked off my job at McDonald’s. I’m a 29-year-old husband and a father of two.

 “My wife can’t work because of health problems – and the $7.50 an hour I make at McDonald’s just isn’t enough to cover my family’s basic needs.”

Outside Wendy’s and McDonald’s in Manhattan, workers chanted, “We can’t survive, on seven twenty-five” – the federal minimum wage.

Lisette Ortiz, who works in Brooklyn, New York, said, “I want us to be respected. $7.25 is not enough! I live with my dad. I would like to get my own apartment. You can’t! It’s impossible!”

At a rally leading up to the walkout, Kentucky Fried Chicken employee Naquasia LeGrand told fellow workers, “I don’t want my kids suffering. I want to make sure they have a better future than I do. So if I want that to happen, I need you guys to stand with me just as long as I’m standing with you.”

 “It’s noisy, it’s really hot, fast, they rush you. Sometimes you don’t even get breaks. All for $7.25? It’s crazy,” said Nathalia Sepulveda, who works at a McDonald’s opposite Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York.

Those are just some of the voices heard on the demonstrations. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is lower today than at any time in the past 50 years. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, it would be about $10 an hour. If it had kept pace with the growth of average labour productivity, it would be about $17 an hour. But the capitalists have not shared the growth in labour productivity with workers.

Instead they have taken advantage of cheaper necessities of life to lower wages and reap higher profits.

According to the Living Wage Project, a single adult in New York City would need to make $12.75 an hour to have a bare living wage, far above the $9 an hour minimum wage New York state plans to implement over the next three years. Moreover, many fast food workers don’t get 40 hours of work a week, so their real wage is less. Employers of low wage workers frequently restrict the number of hours they can work, keeping them technically part time to avoid the costs of benefits that would be mandated for full time.

Right to unionise

In addition to demanding that their wages be doubled to $15 an hour, the workers also demanded the right to unionise without employer retaliation for organising efforts.

While there had been previous attempts to organise fast food workers, the current campaign went public in New York City last November, when 200 workers walked off the job at various fast food places.

Over the past four months, walkouts followed in five more cities, leading up to the July actions.

It should be noted that these were not traditional strikes by unionised workers seeking union recognition. While some unions, especially the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), have played a key role in organising these actions, they have done so through various community groups, and among a minority of workers in the fast food establishments.

Many workers who have joined the actions have been intimidated by management or fired. One of the demands of the July actions was that no workers who participated face company discipline for doing so, and that seems to have been largely effective.

After the walkouts, organisers and workers say enthusiasm has grown for their efforts. At a Domino’s Pizza in Manhattan, Anatole Yameogo, a 43-year-old delivery worker from Burkina Faso, persuaded only one other worker to walk out with him. But when he went back to work, other employees applauded him, he said. “The other people are ready now. I explained to them what we are doing is not only for us. It is for everybody.”

Ann Marie Wallace, a 29-year-old cashier at a Burger King, was one of 10 workers who walked out, shutting down the store for the day. The next day, a co-worker asked her about the next strike. “Before the strike, she was afraid”, Wallace said. “But she saw that nothing happened when we went back to work. No one was fired and they didn’t cut our hours.”

Other low-paid workers are watching. Michael Ahles, a 21-year-old Walmart employee in Minnesota, said he’s seen a surge of enthusiasm on the internet. He is the online leader for Our Walmart, a group that has led recent organising efforts. The fast food strike “blew up like crazy on Facebook”, he said. “It was one of the main things I saw posted by just about everybody I know.

 “I think it’s kind of one of those things that’s got to play itself out to see how it goes, but it could have a huge effect later as more people get educated about why people are standing up for better wages and workplaces.”

This is a hard fight, but one all workers should support.