THE LINE typically forms at the door of the Wendy’s in Downtown Brooklyn during lunch hour. Not on November 30. That’s because a picket line circled the Fulton Street sidewalk in front of the restaurant, and organizers with New York Communities for Change (NYCC) stood by the entrance, distributing leaflets and urging costumers to eat elsewhere.
The previous day, on November 29, employees of McDonald’s, Burger King, Yum Brands and other fast-food restaurants across New York City walked off the job in the largest fast-food workers strike in American history. Their demands: $15 an hour and union recognition.
But after walking off the job on Thursday, the workers faced another challenge the following day—walking back on.
Upon returning to work at Wendy’s November 30, single mother Shalonda Montgomery was told not to bother clocking in. “She was the youngest worker,” said Sherry Jones with NYCC, “and she was the newest. They let everybody else go right back. But they tried to make an example out of her.”
When news of the firing got out, fast-food workers from across the city mobilized in Montgomery’s defense. The restaurant quickly became the focal point of the Fast Food Forward Campaign, which the day before had helped orchestrate the strike that saw approximately 200 workers at 27 restaurants across the city refuse to go to work.
The fast-food fightback is part of a growing upsurge in struggle initiated by the working poor in the United States. Last month, a nationwide day of action involving laborers at hundreds of Wal-Marts on Black Friday left a ray of hope on the consumerist holiday for workers and their supporters. Aside from the recent fast-food fight, there have been a number of successful unionization drives among car wash and grocery workers in New York City recently.
“Workers have been talking with one another,” said Deborah Ax of the community-based labor organization Make the Road. “There’s an unprecedented level of organizing going on.”
Make the Road has helped spearhead a campaign among car-wash workers in which strikes have won higher wages and back pay. Four car washes have voted to unionize since the organizing drive began in March.
Ax said Make the Road identified workers ready to lead the car-wash crusade while campaigning in immigrant and working-class communities around health care and housing issues. The organization put the workers in touch with one another, and today, worker councils exist at numerous car washes, coordinating through a citywide steering committee.
Their efforts have been bolstered by an agreement from the Taxi Workers Alliance and the city’s limo drivers (represented by the International Association of Machinists) not to patronize targeted shops, though Ax admits there are really no “good guy” car washes. The going hourly wage is $5.50 in the car-wash industry—the tipped minimum wage—and shifts often last up to 12 hours.
Yet there are bad guys that stand out, such as car-wash kingpin John Lage, who owns 23 washes and is under investigation by the state Attorney General’s office over hourly wage violations. Three of Lage’s washes have voted to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, but so far, he has been unwilling to sit down and discuss terms and conditions. Make the Road is pushing for the city government to follow the lead set by taxi and black-car drivers and cancel existing contracts it has with Lage.
Juan Carlos, an employee at a Lage car wash in SoHo, said that once he began organizing for a union, Lage approached him personally and gave him a 50-cent raise. In the seven years prior to the union drive, whenever Carlos complained about his pay, he was told that if he didn’t like it he could go home—and now, all of a sudden, a raise.
“It was his way of saying, ‘Stop organizing’” said Carlos. But Carlos didn’t stop organizing, and as we spoke last Thursday night, a picket of roughly 300 “carwasheros” and supporters stamped to the rhythm of a brass brand in front of the SoHo car wash, demanding Lage negotiate a fair contract with the newly formed union.
“I’m not fighting just for myself,” he said. “I’m fighting for all of us. We’re only going to win this by fighting together.”