Fast Food Workers Walk Off Jobs In Detroit In Protest Of Low-Wages
DETROIT (WWJ) - Dozens of workers at fast food restaurants across metro Detroit walked off the job Friday in protest over low wages.
Twenty-two-year old Shavontaye Jackson tells WWJ's Stephanie Davis that she and two co-workers walked-off their job at McDonald's in Southfield.
"We are basically out here, just to get a message across because we feel like we are not making ends meet," said Jackson as a baby was heard in the background. "We can't pay our bills, we are struggling actually and it's harder for single parents, like myself, to pay our bills."
Rev. W.J. Rideout with Good Jobs Now one of the organizing groups of the protest who says this protest is a push to get Michigan legislators to raise the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour.
"There's approximately 122 fast food joints ... locations ... in the city of Detroit. And there's 50,000 plus workers who is getting minimum wage, living beneath the poverty and can not even provide for their families or themselves and it has to stop," he said.
"We shut down a lot of locations," added Rev. Rideout. "Approximately six locations including ; McDonalds, Popeyes, Long John Silvers, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King."
Fifty-two-year old Margaret Neal says it has been a struggle working at McDonalds for 15-years.
Paid just under $9 an hour Neal doesn't want to miss a day of work; "Even when I'm sick, I'm still going to work - unless I get real ill - that I don't go to work," she said. "But other than that I do go to work - every single day."
Fast food workers in St. Louis, New York and Chicago walked off the job as well.
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