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FastFoodWageProtest

Fast Food workers fed up with low pay stopped taking orders so that they could make their demands today.

Many McDonald’s workers are only making minimum wage, and they’re most definitely not loving it! That’s why thousands of them in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Nashville, Durham, Los Angeles and tons more cities across the country staged a mass protest that brought some places to a standstill, Reuters reports.

According to MSNBC, people in 150 cities participated in the demonstration. Among their ranks was a member of congress. The protest came just two days after President Obama made a Labor Day address stating, “If I were busting my butt in the service industry and wanted an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, I’d join a union.”

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Somewhere between 400-450 people were arrested in Manhattan for blocking traffic in Times Square this morning as they shouted for McDonald’s to raise their wages to $15 an hour.

“With $15, I’d be able to save up enough to rent a home for my kids,” LaToya Walker, a McDonald’s worker from Queens that lives in a homeless shelter with her five kids, told Reuters. She’s currently earning about $8 an hour. To put this in better perspective, raising wages to $15 an hour would mean that a full time employee could earn about $30,000 a year.

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People in Los Angeles were a little more direct in their message as they went into McDonald’s restaurants to talk to managers.

McDonald’s seemed to be getting the brunt of the protest, but demonstrators weren’t just focusing on them. Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC were among the other fast food chains that workers were aiming their demands at today.

Just as people came together from different companies to push for fair wages, they’re also hoping to stick together by creating a union which would help to govern management practices at fast food chains.

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Fast Food Workers Arrested During Protest For Higher Wages In 150 Cities  was originally published on hellobeautiful.com