fast food workers
Fast food employees are among the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. 13 , while as of 2012, the
CEOs of that industry earned over 1,200 times as much as the average worker. 14 That’s more
than four times the amount of CEO-to-worker inequality in the U.S. economy as a whole.18
In November 2012, fast food workers around the U.S. began a wave of one-day strikes to
demand a $15 an hour minimum wage and the right to form a union. While their struggle was
partly aimed at their employers, they also needed to combat a public perception that fast food
employees are mostly teenagers who are just picking up a little pocket money. The reality is that
only about 30 percent of the fast food workforce is made up of teenagers. Among adult fast
food workers, a large proportion are parents (30 percent), and a much higher proportion (70
percent) have completed high school, if not more. 15
To try to win public support for the fast food strikes, the Service Employees International Union
(SEIU)—which organized the fast food strikes along with Fast Food Forward—hired a public
relations firm, BerlinRosen, to help attract media coverage of the workers and their movement. 16
Numerous media outlets have covered the campaign. Despite this success, some people have
criticized this PR-focused strategy—and the top-down nature of the organizing effort—as
detracting from efforts to organize workers into a union. One worker lamented: “I don’t like
the fact that these people, the workers, are being used like pawns. ... tell them what to say,
what makes the best story for the media.” SEIU organizers expressed concern that this kind of
criticism of the campaign would only provide a public relations boost to political factions who
already oppose it. 17
62