President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Biden*

(R) Donald Trump

80%

20%↓

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

90%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

90%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(D) Adam Frisch

(R) Jeff Hurd

(R) Ron Hanks

40%

30%

20%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(R) J. Sonnenberg

(R) Ted Harvey

20%↑

15%↑

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Dave Williams

(R) Jeff Crank

(R) Doug Bruce

20%

20%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

90%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) Brittany Pettersen

85%↑

 

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

(R) Janak Joshi

60%↑

40%↑

20%↑

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
August 28, 2013 03:56 PM UTC

No Fries for You!

  • 20 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

THURSDAY UPDATE: The Denver Post's Kristen Leigh Painter:

Fast-food workers from around the Denver metro area joined a national movement Thursday, seeking higher wages for the industry by staging a local walkout at a McDonald's in Northglenn.

More than 100 demonstrators were on the scene at the McDonald's on West 104th Avenue in Northglenn, just west of Interstate 25, between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. Thursday morning.

—–

Denver fast food workers will join a nationwide strike beginning tomorrow. Via press release from SEIU Local 105:

Fast-food workers in the Denver Metro area are expected to walk off their jobs Thursday as part of the largest-ever strike to hit the $200 billion industry. Inspired by strikes earlier this summer in seven cities across the country, Denver workers will walk off their jobs for the first time, calling for $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation or unfair labor practices.

Thursday’s strike will span 50 cities and every region of the continental United States.

Full press release after the jump…

 

DENVER FAST-FOOD WORKERS TO JOIN NATIONWIDE STRIKE THURSDAY

Movement for $15 and a Union Without Retaliation or Unfair Labor Practices Reaches Denver

  

DENVER – Fast-food workers in the Denver Metro area are expected to walk off their jobs Thursday as part of the largest-ever strike to hit the $200 billion industry. Inspired by strikes earlier this summer in seven cities across the country, Denver workers will walk off their jobs for the first time, calling for $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation or unfair labor practices.

 

Thursday’s strike will span 50 cities and every region of the continental United States.

 

In Denver, there are over 41,000 fast-food workers. The median wage is $8.84. An adult with one child needs to make $20.95 an hour working full time in the Denver area just to afford the basics, according to a model developed by a professor at MIT.

 

In addition to Denver, strikes will hit cities all over the country, including Boston, Chicago, Hartford, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, New York, Oakland Raleigh and Tampa.

 

The strikes follow walkouts by fast-food workers in seven cities earlier this summer and are the latest in an escalating series of walkouts by workers across the country. Federally-contracted workers in Washington have walked off their jobs; a growing number of Walmart workers have gone on strike; warehouse workers walked out; carwash workers have hit the picket lines; and, earlier this week, America’s port drivers parked their trucks.

 

Local clergy, elected officials, and community supporters will join fast-food workers on the strike lines as the nationwide fight for higher wages hits Denver.

Comments

20 thoughts on “No Fries for You!

  1. Good for them. For less than $9/hour full-time as a single person you can't afford health care and if you want to eat even kind of okay you'll sharing your living quarters with several others… That's assuming you get to work full-time, which most fast food workers don't get – instead they get wildly varying schedules that prevent them from taking and holding second jobs. And let's talk about that whole two and three job worker thing… what ever happened to the country where one parent could reasonably afford to stay home and care for the children?

        1. Thanks for showing us what you Republicans really think of honest working people.  I thought that's what you TeaHadists were all about? Sadly, it's not really a surprise. 

          You go right ahead and kiss that corporate ass. Lord knows you've had enough practice. 

      1. I think what he means is that undocumented workers wouldn't dare (he hopes) because their bosses have too much power over them and their families. This is the real reason righties don't want immigration reform or to have to pay a living wage. The wink, wink system in place now is perfect for low wages and exploitation of the powerless. The noises about border security first (as if we don't already have the tightest border security ever) are just to delay reform that might deprive big corporations of low wage labor over whom they can exercise absolute power via intimidation. 

        Same goal as union busting. Take away the power workers gained during the golden age of the American middle class.  Replace a vibrant empowered middle class majority with a desperate powerless low wage majority. Tell them to like it or lump it.

        Of course the jokes on all the Republican voting Joe Six Packs who have been bamboozled into supporting the demise of their own class. 

    1. Ummm . . . sooooo, you're saying that your corporate food mega-purveyors are illegally hiring improperly documented workers??

      (Come on ArapaGOP — this N3b and that Moderatus sock puppet?? — christsakes.  

      Quit hiding and just come back and take your well-deserved lumps, you freakin' weenie …  

      Besides, you weren't hardly smart enough to be able to keep one on-line persona alive — what makes you think you can keep these two trollish identities straight???)

       

          1. I don't know. I don't think n3b and Moderatus are the same.  Would somebody like ArapG want any part of "moderate" in his name?  I don't think these yahoos do irony.   Pretty sure Moderatus doesn't mean to be ironic.

            1. It really doesn't matter if people use different identities. Attack the arguments, not the individual.  It frustrates them so much more.

              Living wage or no living wage? That's the question.

    1. We should strive to get every full-time job up to a living wage, yes. If you commit pretty much your week to a company, you deserve to be able to live based on your week's dedication.

      From a small government perspective, people living below the living wage standard have their living subsidized by government programs using taxpayer money. Wouldn't it be nice if, rather than the government collecting taxes to spend on the working poor, those people were paid enough for their hard work to not require government assistance? (Or, of course, you could give them "tough love" and force them to live out in the street in the winter…)

      1. Ok.  I hear what you are saying.  And I agree for the most part.  I ask, what about entry level jobs?  Those generally reserved for the newly employed who have yet to earn a highschool diploma or GED?  The fast food jobs, in the past, were taken by those young people, not someone trying to support themselves and a family.  Shouldn't there be entry level jobs that are entry level precisely because they are tailored for those entering the work force?   As for welfare, charity begins in the home.  Wouldn't it be nice if we kept a bit more of our money which would allow us to help each other out, and participate in the act of giving?  Instead of we have government "helping" which really, in my opinion has made charity far less than it once was.  (I say this only because we take in those who could use a hand up about once a year.)

        1. Are you committing the majority of your waking life to a job? Then you should be able to live on it. And yes, entry level jobs – the minimum full time employment should not equate to starving/dying IMHO. A living wage should be the minimum standard for someone working hard, full time in my ideal version of America (and the world, really). And that includes those who work several part-time jobs like the fast food worker working two or three different shops in order to add up to a full time job (and often more).

          As for charity vs. government… Well, if you're really feeling charitable, it can be deducted out of your taxes. And there's still need – it's not like the government has come in and removed all need for charity. Poor people still use food banks, shelters and kitchens. I sadly believe that on the whole we are a more fearful, distrusting, cynical, heard-hearted, narcissistic and greedy people, and that is the cause of any decline in charity.

          1. And middle class well paying jobs are increasingly disappearing and being replaced by low wage jobs. How does having fewer people making good money benefit  our consumer economy? As the old industrial sector jobs are being replaced with service sector jobs, the middle class will be replaced by working poor unless those  replacement jobs start paying a living wage. 

            The reason those jobs were mainly for kids who lived at home and wanted spending money and maybe to save money for college was because there were plenty of jobs offering decent living wages and great benefits for their parents in plants and factories.  That world is gone. That world's rules no longer apply. 

            Whatever jobs are most widely available for the average worker have to pay a living wage or the era of an America with the world's broadest most prosperous middle class fueling a vibrant economy is over. Period.

            The unions created that prosperous middle class in the first place. It's good to see the glimmerings of a new movement, a new realization that workers have given up too much and need to band together again, that they've been had by the right to work conservatives who were really just bamboozling them into the "right" to work for less and have less power, less access to health care, less opportunity to send their kids to college, less upward mobility, less everything. I hope the movement grows.

            1. Good analysis, BC. Pueblo's status as a heavily democratic-voting district is one legacy of that union-strong era. When the steel mills were in their heyday, there was a plethora of good union jobs, and the community was built from it.

                Pueblo's union legacy is a system of little parks with neighborhoods centered around them, big parks and a zoo, museums, wide streets, beautiful old buildings and shopping districts for everyone, not just the uber-rich.

              Mansions side-by-side with little brick worker housing. Three cultures: Slavic, Italian, and Mexican, learning "diversity" and "tolerance" before these became buzzwords. E'sven though Pueblo does vote Democratic, there's still  diversit of political affiliation, too – like most of Colorado, Pueblo is about 1/3 Republican, 1/3 unaffiliated, or Independent, 1/3 Democratic.

              With all its flaws, the first large mental-health facility in Colorado was here.  Pueblo still has one of the best network of mental health centers of any place in Colorado.

              So that's my ode to Pueblo, and Woohoo! Thanks to our County Clerk and Judge McGayhey, I get to vote today against the recall! I'm psyched.

              Unionized living-wage jobs are part of a whole system of building the society we want to live in.

               

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Yadira Caraveo
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

104 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!