The next wave of fast-food strikes will include Twin Cities workers.
Organizers with CTUL, the low-wage workers’ center based in the Twin Cities, announced today that area fast-food workers will walk off the job Thursday, joining a nationwide campaign to raise wages and improve conditions for the industry’s frontline workers.
CTUL has not announced which fast-food restaurants will see strike activity, only that the walkouts will take place at 6 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Thursday.
Area clergy, community allies and lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, will walk the picket line in support of striking workers, CTUL said.
Although not a union, CTUL – a Spanish acronym for “Center for Workers United in the Struggle” – was the organizing force behind retail cleaning workers’ successful campaign for better working conditions inside Twin Cities Target stores.
Several times during the protracted Target campaign, retail cleaning workers used short-term strikes to raise the public profile of their campaign – a strategy fast-food workers nationwide have been employing since McDonald’s workers in New York first walked off the job in November 2012, demanding wages of $15 per hour.
The “Fight for $15” campaign has spread to other cities, including strikes in Midwest cities like Milwaukee, Chicago and St. Louis. But Twin Cities actions so far have been limited to demonstrations of solidarity with striking fast-food workers.
That changes Thursday.
Union Advocate 