Fast-food workers strike nationwide in protest against wages

Hundreds of protesters across the US marched Thursday to demand higher wages for fast-food workers, forcing the closure of one McDonald’s in Detroit after its employees walked out.

The protests are underway in cities including New York, Boston and Chicago, and organizers are expecting the biggest national walkouts yet.

A McDonald’s restaurant in Detroit closed Thursday morning as workers and protesters chanted “hey hey, ho ho, $7.40’s got to go,” outside, WJBK reports.

The lack of awareness among some illustrates the challenge workers face. Participating workers, who are asking for $15 an hour, still represent a tiny fraction of the industry. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, which works out to about $15,000 a year for full-time employees.

The movement comes amid calls from the White House, some members of Congress and economists to hike the federal minimum wage. But most proposals seek a far more modest increase than the one workers are asking for, with President Barack Obama wanting to boost it to $9 an hour.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Associate Press, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said the strikes are another sign of the need to raise the minimum wage for all workers. He compared the protests to the demands of demonstrators in the 1963 March on Washington, who sought a national minimum wage to give workers better living standards.

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