No violence was reported early Thursday. Restaurants such as McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and KFC are being targeted. The strike, targeting the $200 billion fast-food industry at a time of intense competition, is aimed at directing consumer attention to the low wages of most fast-food workers. The one-day campaign continues protests launched 18 months ago.
Strikers claim that managers opted to close down a Burger King in Dorchester, Mass, where a half dozen workers were striking, but Burger King officials could not immediately confirm that. "During this time, customer service and quality will remain a top priority in Burger King restaurants," company spokesman Alix Salyers said, in a statement. While McDonald's officials insist that no McDonald's restaurants have been closed due to the strike, protesters insist that several have.
In New York City, dozens of workers stood outside a McDonald's nearby Penn Station demanding higher wages and the right to form a union.
Naquasia LeGrand, 22, of Brooklyn, says this was her sixth strike since 2012. She has worked as a cashier at Kentucky Fried Chicken for three years in Park Slope, an affluent neighborhood in Brooklyn. She makes $8 an hour and pays $1,300 a month for her apartment. She says fast food workers all over are struggling to survive. "We live in New York City--a multi-billion dollar city," she said. "These corporations are taking everything from us. They are making all this money. It's only right that we (workers) come together."
The strike's organizer says that the fast-food giants have the money to pay reasonable wages. "At the end of the day, there is more than enough m! oney to pay these workers $15 an hour," says Kendall Fells, the 34-year-old organizer of Fast Food Forward, who marched with protesters in New York on Thursday. Two-thirds of the the workers are women -- and most of them have children, he says. "They're just trying to support their families and makes ends meet."
In Europe, Lorenz Keller, who works for the Swiss trade union Unia, said that members from his group were protesting outside several McDonald's branches in Zurich and would soon start actions in Geneva. He said that while wages were relatively high in Switzerland so is the cost of living. Some protesters were wearing "sad hamburger costumes," he said.
Banner-waving activists in New Zealand were the first to hit the streets Thursday, as they protested outside a McDonald's in Auckland.
In the Philippines, in keeping with the nation's love of music, young protesters held a singing and dancing flash mob inside a McDonald's on Manila's Quezon Avenue during the morning rush-hour. Up to 75 people, mostly aged between 16 and 25, entered the restaurant and sang "Let It Go," from the animated hit film Frozen, said Giline Servidad of the Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL), an advocacy group which coordinated the flash mob.
"We want McDonald's to let go of low pay, and let workers organize, so they can have a better future," Servidad said. "Now the management doesn't allow them to organize."
In Japan, where protests were planned in 30 cities, co-organizer Manabu Natori failed to find a Ronald costume in time, but was encouraged by the public response to a protest for a higher minimum wage, held outside a downtown Tokyo McDonald's.
"We do this kind of demonstration every month, but there was a huge difference today as people don't walk by but stop to listen," said Natori, 41, a staff member of the National Confederation of Trade Unions, a left-wing labor federation.
China has over 2,000 McDonald's stores and almost 5,000 KFC stores, but no protest activity was plan! ned Thurs! day. Independent trade unions are illegal in China.
Horovitz reported from McLean, Va., MacLeod from Beijing, Hjelmgaard from London.
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