The NYT on the Fast Food Strikes

Political leaders will likewise have to confront their own failures. The strikers did not ask for Washington’s help, but there is a lot that Congress and the Obama administration could do. In addition to raising the minimum wage, there needs to be more enforcement of fair labor laws, including crackdowns on employers that misclassify employees as salaried workers, independent contractors or interns in order to deny them overtime, benefits or other pay. It would help, too, for Congress to end the foot-dragging around implementation of a law passed years ago requiring disclosure of the ratio of chief executive pay to that of a company’s work force.

The Great Recession and the slow recovery have reinforced trends toward inequality and inadequate pay that were evident even before the last downturn. Fast-food workers are fighting back, in just cause.

The editorial board of the New York Times weighed in on the fast food strikes noting that at $7.25 an hour, low paid work “is lower paid today than at any time in modern memory” because the minimum wage has failed to keep up with inflation, and failure to enact right-to-organize legislation has made it difficult for low-paid workers to organize without retaliation from employers. All of this, plus the loss of so many midwage jobs during the recession, have inevitably led to the current strikes.

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