MORE CANDIDATES JOIN MCDONALD’S PICKET LINE

MORE CANDIDATES JOIN MCDONALD’S PICKET LINE

Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Beto O’Rourke are the latest 2020 contenders preparing to picket McDonald’s. The candidates will join workers in protests organized by Fight for $15 in Nevada and South Carolina over pay, sexual harassment, and union rights. Harris will march Friday in Las Vegas, and Buttigieg and O’Rourke will march Saturday in Charleston. According to Fight for $15, McDonald’s workers are targeting “key early primary states to demand union rights as a solution to systemic issues on the job.” Adds Mary Kay Henry, president of the SEIU, which backs Fight for $15: “Anyone who wants to represent working people as an elected leader should be standing with us, shoulder-to-shoulder.”

Democratic candidates have taken note

Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Julián Castro and Jay Inslee all joined striking McDonald’s workers last month to picket for a $15 minimum wage and the right to join a union. Sanders showed up last week, uninvited, to a Walmart shareholders meeting to blast the retail giant’s “starvation wages” and call for workers’ participation on corporate boards. Harris has proposed eliminating the gender wage gap by fining corporations that don’t address pay disparities.