New York City and Fast Food Workers!

The first stop of the Building a Revolutionary Anarchism Speaking Tour isn't until Saturday the 20th in Knoxville, Tennessee. I had hoped for stops at Wooden Shoes Books in Philadelphia and Red Emma's in Baltimore. But, I think the details for the tour went out a little too late for those dates to get put together.

This gives me some time to stop by New York City and visit some friends. A couple of those friends work for New York Communities for Change, one organizing tenants and the other organizing fast food workers for the Fast Food Forward campaign.

That campaign has some exciting moments coming up. A third strike of New York fast food workers is planned for July 29th. While in NYC I was able to attend a meeting of organizers and workers that was one of many meetings throughout the day helping to plan and build for the strike. They also used these moments as opportunities to talk about the strategy of their work and do some base level political education with some of the fast food workers present.

They've clearly got a strong intention of having their activities reach hundreds, even thousands of fast food workers in the city. Their first strike had around 100 participants, their second around 400, and they were calling for around 1,000 to participate in the third day of strikes.

As a former restaurant worker, who spent a decent amount of time in a Pizza Hut, this is incredibly exciting work to me. In 2008, I attended a Restaurant Opportunities Center conference around their efforts to build a nationwide worker center of restaurants. There were some things that bothered me there. Firstly, it didn't seem like there was unanimity within the organization that their aim was to eventually form a union for all restaurant workers. Second, there was a strategic focus on higher-end restaurants as the drivers of industrial standards. I don't know the argument for them being the drivers of those standards, so that might actually be a very good strategy. Unfortunately for me, I was working in a little cheap diner. I wasn't the sort of worker they were organizing, especially in a city where they didn't have an established office and line of funding.

Since fast food seems to represent the floor in terms of working standards, benefits, pay, and job security in the US, it seems like an important place to see serious workplace organizing despite how difficult this work would be.

Had you asked me 4 years ago if we'd see a movement of fast food workers organizing in their workplaces in multiple cities around the country, I'd have laughed at you. But, not only are we there, these workers are demanding a union for all fast food workers, $15/hr starting wage, and are striking to demand recognition rather than relying on the awful NLRB election process. This is an exciting moment, and I was glad to participate in the meeting of those workers beginning to build their strike for the 29th.

I hope that all fast food workers will go out in solidarity on that day, and that anarchists throughout the country will also support those efforts!