Hundreds of Chicago Fast-Food, Airport, Uber Workers to Strike Around the City
CHICAGO–Strikes by McDonald’s fast-food cooks and cashiers from coast to coast, baggage handlers and cabin cleaners at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Uber drivers in two-dozen cities, hospital workers in Pittsburgh and other fast-food workers, combined with mass civil disobedience by working Americans across the service economy, will headline a nationwide Fight for $15 day of disruption Tuesday that includes workers in Chicago.
In addition to the strikes demanding $15 and union rights, the workers will wage their most disruptive protests yet to show they will not back down in the face of newly elected politicians and newly empowered corporate special interests who they feel threaten an extremist agenda to move the country to the right. The protests, at nearly 20 major airports, which serve 2 million passengers a day, and outside McDonald’s restaurants from Durham to Denver, will underscore that any efforts to block wage increases, gut workers’ rights or healthcare, deport immigrants, or support racism or racist policies, will be met with unrelenting opposition by workers in the Fight for $15.
Here in Chicago, McDonald’s and other fast-food workers from across the city and the suburbs, will walk off their jobs and hold a strike protest at 6:00 am at a corporate McDonald’s store, at 2005 W. Chicago Ave, demanding $15 and union rights. They will be joined by hundreds of other low-wage workers, community allies, clergy and elected officials. Dozens will participate in civil disobedience and disrupt a major traffic intersection.
At 9:15 a.m. workers and supporters will head to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in the River North neighborhood where they will march and hold a rally and press conference. Hospital workers are demanding $15 an hour. Northwestern Memorial Hospital is one of the biggest and most profitable hospitals in the country.
At noon, workers will take their protest to O’Hare International Airport, where they’ll join striking baggage handlers, cabin cleaners, janitors, wheelchair attendants and other airport workers to send a message to the major airlines that it’s time they take responsibility for those whose dedication and hard work help to generate $36 billion in profits for the aviation industry.
For the past year, O’Hare workers have been building their case for $15 and union rights at the world’s fourth-busiest airport, but many employees report employers have been non-responsive. Now, O’Hare workers are taking matters into their own hands with today’s practice strike.
Workers frustrated with an economy including airport, fast-food, home care, higher education and child care workers have organized the massive demonstrations to mark the fourth anniversary of the Fight for $15, a movement that has won raises for 22 million Americans since it started in 2012.
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