Thousands of union workers quit their jobs Monday in an effort to support initiatives to dismantle racism in a protest called the Strike for Black Lives. The protest was organized by union groups, including the International Service Employees Union (SEIU), the American Federation of Teachers, United Farm Workers and The Fight for $ 15, and a Union, along with social justice groups, including the Movement for Black Lives, the US Youth Climate Strike Coalition and the Center for Popular Democracy.
The protest took place in more than 25 major cities across the country, including New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Seattle, and Milwaukee.
Workers turn to fast food companies like McDonald’s (MCD) to highlight the overrepresentation of minorities working in low-wage, front-line jobs during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Companies like McDonald’s cannot, on the one hand, tweet that ‘Black Lives Matter’ and on the other hand pay us poverty wages and do not provide sick days and adequate PPE,” Angely Rodriguez Lambert, McDonald’s worker in Oakland, California, and leader in the fight for $ 15 and a Union, he said in a statement.
“We are on strike because McDonald’s and other fast food companies have failed to protect us in a pandemic that has devastated black and brown communities across the country,” he said.
Amika Tendaji of Black Lives Matter Chicago speaks to people outside McDonald’s restaurant at 180 W. Adams St. in Chicago on Monday July 20, 2020. The event is part of a national strike that organizers hoped would involve tens of thousands of persons. leaving work. (AP Photo / Joshua Housing)
In Detroit, fast-food workers joined nursing home workers in a protest to highlight what the SEIU called “the failure of the industry to protect its largely black workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic ”
According to a statement by organizers, the strike is “demanding solutions from the government and corporations that target communities of color and dismantle racist policies to ensure that all families are healthy and safe, regardless of race, immigration status, work or where they live. “
Specifically, the group has four main demands, from “justice for black communities, with an unequivocal statement that black lives matter,” to the opportunity for each worker to form a union.
In New York, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) joined protesters in demanding that Congress pass the second stimulus bill, the Heroes Act. Democrats approved the $ 3 trillion stimulus plan in May, but since then it has languished in the Republican-majority Senate.
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