Fast-food workers to rally for $15 minimum wage: report

Protesters seeking to raise the minimum wage of fast-food workers to $15 an hour are planning to rally in Detroit and other cities on Monday, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Fast-food workers in Detroit will leave their posts about noon to march in solidarity with the Poor People’s Campaign, a group fighting for economic justice for poor people, the newspaper reported. Monday marks the 50th anniversary of the Memphis sanitation strike, and the protesters are purposely linking their cause to the civil rights movement, according to the Free Press.

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“We’re going to send a message to corporations and politicians that their time of rigging the economy against workers is over,” the Rev. W.J. Rideout, one of the local protest organizers, told the Free Press. “We have to stand up and fight back.”

Monday will also see a 1,500-person-strong march in Memphis, according to the newspaper.

The effort to raise the minimum wage has faced resistance from employers in the past.

Michigan Restaurant Association President and CEO Justin Winslow told the Free Press that while the effort may help some people, it hurts many who end up being scheduled fewer shifts or being laid off altogether.

But the campaign has seen some successes across the country. Eighteen states and 20 cities initiated minimum wage increases in 2018.

With the new effort to connect the fight for a higher minimum wage with civil rights struggles, activists are hoping to connect economic security to human rights efforts, the Free Press reported.