August 29 Photo Brief: Fast-food workers protest, aerial view of Burning Man 2013, all eyes on Syria
Fast-food workers continue campaign to get higher wages, an aerial view of Burning Man 2013, nations consider action in Syria and more in today’s daily brief.
- The King’s Troop of Royal Horse Artillery during preparations for their performance at The Country Fair at Chatsworth House on August 29, 2013 in Chatsworth, Derbyshire, England. The show runs from August 30th to September 1st where the troop will perform twice a day. (Nigel Roddis/Getty Images)
- Workers and their supporters protest outside Burger King as part of a nationwide strike by fast-food workers to call for wages of $15 an hour, in Los Angeles, California August 29, 2013. Fast-food workers staged strikes at McDonald’s and Burger Kings and demonstrated at other stores in sixty U.S. cities on Thursday in their latest action in a nearly year-long campaign to raise wages in the service sector. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
- Susanna Dimitri brushes her hair at her apartment in Paris May 24, 2013. Dimitri, 29, works in Paris as a teacher, model and part-time performing artist (Intermittent du spectacle) in France. (Gonzalo Fuentes /Reuters)
- White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest answers questions during the daily media briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House August 29, 2013 in Washington, DC. Earnest fielded questions from reporters about the Obama Administration’s stance and response to the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
- The eye of a rhinoceros is pictured on August 29, 2013 at the zoo in Dortmund, western Germany. (Jan-Philipp Strobel/AFP/Getty Images)
- Asha Foundation Animal Shelter and Hospital founder and coordinator Harmesh Bhatt poses with a rescued wine snake and its young at the shelter in the village of Hathijan, some 20 kms from Ahmedabad, on August 29, 2013. The rescued animals which include 18 cobras, four juvenile pythons, a wine snake with its six young offspring, six rat snakes, twelve sand boas and nine scorpions, were rescued from snake charmers invoking Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act during the Janmashtami fair in Sanand town. The reptiles will eventually be released into the wild. (Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images)
- This young whooping crane is on its first fall migration, guided by an Operation Migration ultralight. Brown bars on its wings will fade by the time this bird migrates north in spring. Whoopers in the Eastern population have identifying bands, and many carry tracking devices that record their movements in detail. Whooping cranes learn how to migrate by following elders in their midst, suggesting that social influence has a large bearing on the birds’ culture, scientists said on August 29, 2013. (Handout photo Joe Duff from the Operation Migration USA Inc. via AFP/Getty Images)
- Senior Muslim Brotherhood official Mohamed El-Beltagi (C) stands at a police station after being arrested by security forces in Giza, south of Cairo, in this Egyptian Interior Ministry handout picture provided on August 29, 2013. Egyptian police captured El-Beltagi on Thursday, security sources said, as they pressed on with a crackdown that has put many of the Islamist group’s leaders behind bars in recent weeks. (Egyptian Interior Ministry/Handout via Reuters)
- A supporter of Social Democratic top candidate Peer Steinbrueck (SPD) rides with his bicycle to an election campaign event in the western city of Muenster August 29, 2013. German voters will take to the polls in a general election on September 22. (Ina Fassbender/Reuters)
- Three Bengal tiger cubs play with a camera at Taman Safari Indonesia in Pasuruan, East Java province August 29, 2013. The zookeepers have to feed the three female cubs, born on July 5, 2013, as their mother has stopped giving them milk, reported local media. (Sigit Pamungkas/Reuters)
- An aerial view of the Burning Man 2013 arts and music festival is seen in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, August 29, 2013. The federal government issued a permit for 68,000 people from all over the world to gather at the sold out festival, which is celebrating its 27th year, to spend a week in the remote desert cut off from much of the outside world to experience art, music and the unique community that develops. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
- Ocean environmentalist Scott Cassell of the U.S. poses in his homebuilt submersible “The Great White” in Singapore August 29, 2013. Cassell says his submersible runs entirely on electricity and is homebuilt from mostly recycled materials. The two-man craft can deep dive to the depth of 574 feet and will be deployed on a marine study trip in the waters of Malaysia. (Edgar Su/Reuters)
- A Free Syrian Army fighter stands near a damaged military tank that belonged to the forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad after they seized it, in Aleppo’s town of Khanasir August 29, 2013. Rebel forces took control of a strategic town in northern Syria on Monday, killing more than 50 pro-government fighters and cutting off government forces’ only supply route out of the city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. (Molhem Barakat/Reuters)
- Vehicles are seen partially submerged in floodwaters caused by Tropical Storm Kong-rey in Chiayi county, southern Taiwan August 29, 2013. (Stringer/Reuters)
RELATED
Fast-food workers begin strikes across U.S. over wages
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, Reuters
11:23 AM EDT, August 29, 2013
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fast-food workers staged strikes at McDonald’s and Burger Kings and demonstrated at other stores in sixty U.S. cities on Thursday in their latest action in a nearly year-long campaign to raise wages in the service sector.
The strikes spread quickly across the country and have shut down restaurants in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Raleigh and Seattle, according to organizers.
The fast-food workers were expected to be joined by retail staff from stores owned by Macy’s Inc, Sears Holdings Corp and Dollar Tree Inc.
The fast-food workers want to form unions in the virtually union-free sector without employer retaliation and bargain for higher wages.
They are demanding pay of $15 an hour, up from $7.25, which is the current federal minimum wage.
Martin Rafanan, a community organizer in St. Louis, said local employees of McDonald’s and Wendy’s can’t make it on the salaries.
“If you’re paying $7.35 an hour and employing someone for 20, 25 hours a week, which is the average here, they’re bringing home about $10,000 a year. You can’t survive on that.” Rafanan said. Missouri’s minimum wage is $7.35 an hour.
“Unless we can figure out how to make highly profitable companies pay a fair wage to their workers, we’re just going to watch them pull all the blood, sweat, tears and money out of our communities.”
McDonald’s profits totaled $5.47 billion in 2012.
MOMENTUM BUILDING
Momentum has been building in recent months, organizers say, as they receive financial and technical support from the Service Employees International Union, community activists, politicians and the clergy.
Last November, some 200 workers walked off their fast-food jobs in New York City. Groups in Chicago, Kansas City, Detroit and other cities followed their lead in April and July.
The $200 billion U.S. fast-food sector as well as retail sales and food preparation have been under the spotlight because they have added most of the jobs, in many cases lower-paying and part time, since the recession.
Restaurant chains and trade groups say the protests are unwarranted because fast-food and retail outlets provide Americans with millions of good jobs with competitive pay and ample opportunities to rise through the ranks.
“Our history is full of examples of individuals who worked their first job with McDonald’s and went on to successful careers both within and outside of McDonald’s,” McDonald’s said in a statement.
Wendy’s and Burger King did not respond to requests for comment.
The restaurant chains have not changed their wage policies as a result of recent strikes.
The National Retail Federation said in a statement the strikes are “further proof that the labor movement (has) abdicated their role in an honest and rational discussion about the American workforce.”
And in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, the conservative Employment Policies Institute ran a full-page ad with a picture of a robot making pancakes, warning that higher wages would mean “fewer entry-level jobs and more automated alternatives.”
“You can either raise prices and lose customers, or (automate) those jobs,” said Michael Saltsman, EPI’s research director, adding that “the idea that restaurants are rolling in the money is not representative of the situation franchisees face.”
The median wage for front-line fast-food workers is $8.94 per hour, according to an analysis of government data by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), an advocacy group for lower-wage workers.
“The workers are responding to total failure on behalf of the federal government to raise the minimum wage to keep up with inflation and the cost of living,” said Tsedeye Gebreselassie, an attorney at the NELP, referring to the strikes.
The walkouts, coming before the U.S. Labor Day holiday on Monday, also took place in the Southern states of Texas, Louisiana, and North Carolina.
Dorian Warren, an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University who has published work on labor organizing and inequality, said the significance of protests in the South is “a huge, huge deal.”
“The South has always been the model for low wage employment, from slavery to the Jim Crow laws, to the present. It’s also the most anti-union part of the country, so the fact that workers feel empowered enough to take collective action is enormous,” Warren said.
(Reporting By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian; Editing by Andre Grenon and Jeffrey Benkoe)