St. Louis fast food workers braved the cold Thursday to join a 100-city strike, protesting outside McDonalds, Arby's, Domino's Pizza and Rally's for higher wages and the right to unionize.
The strikes started a year ago in New York and have swept across the nation as fast food workers ask for a pay increase to $15 per hour. In St. Louis, the campaign has adopted the name "Show Me $15."
See more photos: Show Me $15 Fast Food Workers Rally
"Our country's fastest growing jobs are also the lowest paid, slowing the economy and hurting our local economy," Show Me $15 says in a statement about the December 5 protests. "While the fast food industry is making record profits, its workers are forced to rely on public assistance -- to the tune of 7 billion taxpayer dollars each year -- just to afford the basics."
See also: St. Louis Fast-Food Workers Protest for Better Pay, Right to Organize
Show Me $15 calculates the median salary for St. Louis' 36,000 fast food workers to be around $8.71.
Follow Lindsay Toler on Twitter at @StLouisLindsay. E-mail the author at [email protected].
