'It's a walkout!' Inside the fast-food workers' season of rebellion

[mahatmakanejeeves]

‘It’s a walkout!’ Inside the fast-food workers’ season of rebellion

By Greg Jaffe
Photos by Ricky Carioti
Nov. 6, 2021

BRADFORD, Pa. — Dustin Snyder was tired of the low wages, the 60-hour workweeks and the impossible-to-please customers, and so in early September the assistant general manager at a McDonald’s here drafted a petition that laid bare months of building anger and frustration.

“We are all leaving,” his petition threatened, “and hope you find employees that want to work for $9.25 an hour.” Nearly all of his two dozen employees had signed it. A few added their own flourishes.

“We need a RAISE,” one scribbled next to her signature.

“Piss off,” wrote another.

Dustin, 21, could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he fed the petition into the fax machine in the McDonald’s office, punched in the number for his bosses 80 miles away in Buffalo and hit send. Another low-wage worker rebellion in a season full of them.

{snip}

Jennifer Jenkins and Andrew Van Dam contributed to this report.

Greg Jaffe
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Greg Jaffe?is a national reporter with The Washington Post who spent more than a decade covering the military. He’s the co-author of “The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army.”

[VarryOn]

1. The most astounding thing in this article...

Is someone still uses a fax machine. I haven’t seen or used one in probably 15 years, if not more.

[Tetrachloride]

2. In my previous jobs, I had a reliable set of convenience stores and even McDonalds

that i would go to the most. Most Wisconsin and Iowa people know of Kwik-Trip. ( not to be confused with other companies with similar spellings )

I am grateful for those outposts of good coffee and egg croissants.

But as good as Kwik Trip was, turnover, overwork, absenteeism, crime in certain parking lot were issues.

I bought my stuff and got back to work. At least i could sit down as a driver.

[SWBTATTReg]

3. And McDonald's didn't see this coming? It couldn't see the simmering anger, etc. just underneath

the surface of its workers? And how in the world they get by w/ hourly rates of only $9.25 an hour? And I bet that none of these workers got any benefits worth mentioning, I didn't want to pass the paywall to find out more information about the plight of these workers since we have all heard repeated stories about their low pay, low to zero benefits, ignorant customers, etc.

I guess in a way, the customers are getting what they paid for, w/ their poor attitudes and other such nonsense, so in a way, these customers are breeding the very worker insurrections that are happening across the Country. It's, like I said, the workers knew all along about these issues, but the customers and McDonald's didn't or deliberately ignored the issues of the workers.

[in2herbs]

4. In my area Dominos is advertising it's giving away $50 million in freebies such as lava cakes

breadsticks, etc. when you order on line. Why don't they spend this $50 million on wages and benefits instead of giving away food that will only make people fatter?

My total support to any low-wage worker(s) who walk out.