By Eric Morath
The union movement is placing a pricey bet as it racks up
victories in a national push to raise minimum wages for fast-food
workers: It's spending tens of millions of dollars in support of
workers who can't collectively bargain and don't pay a penny in
dues.
Those workers, who marched in the rain Tuesday evening, filling
more than two blocks of downtown Chicago's Michigan Avenue ahead of
a McDonald's Corp. shareholders meeting, have become the new face
of the labor movement as they push for a $15-an-hour minimum
wage.
The question is whether they'll become the new face of union
membership.
Labor organizations' "Fight for $15" strategy, led by the
Service Employees International Union, primarily benefits low-wage
workers rather than traditional union members, such as
manufacturing laborers, public-school teachers and nurses.
"The SEIU is groping towards a new model -- trying to come up
with other ways of helping workers beyond their own narrow
membership," said Harry Holzer, a Georgetown University
public-policy professor who worked in the Labor Department during
the Bill Clinton administration. The Fight for $15 "helps raise the
union's profile and their political clout. It also raises the
question of: How are they going to pay for it?"
Dwindling union membership and tight budgets for organized labor
could make it difficult to support an effort that yields little
benefit to most union workers, who typically earn well more than
$15 an hour. The median weekly earnings for a full-time union
worker last year was $1,004, or about $25 an hour, according to
Labor Department data. Median earnings of nonunion workers was $802
a week.
The Fight for $15, which emerged in late 2012 from a New York
gathering of fast-food workers and SEIU organizers, has been
successful. Two of the most populous states, California and New
York, are on the path to reach a $15-an-hour minimum, as are more
than a dozen cities, including Seattle and Washington, D.C. And
employers including Aetna Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have
pledged to lift starting pay for workers -- all while the federal
pay floor has remained $7.25 an hour since 2009.
Protesters finalized their plans in the basement of a Chicago
pizzeria in the hours before Tuesday's protest. Bettie Douglas, 59
years old, asked fellow fast-food workers half her age to excuse
her language before she uttered, "I'm very angry -- I'm pissed
off."
The St. Louis McDonald's worker said she is upset that state
lawmakers may soon strip her of a minimum-wage increase enacted
just weeks ago in the city. She said fast-food workers need a union
to give them a better voice with politicians and corporations.
"You can't live on $7.90 an hour," Ms. Douglas said. "They can
afford to do better by us."
The SEIU sent more than $16 million last year to about a dozen
regional organizing committees and a related public-relations firm
to run Fight for $15 activities, according to filings with the
Labor Department. It has spent similar amounts each year since
2013, a sizable portion of its roughly $300 million annual budget.
And those amounts don't include millions more spent on everything
from legal fees to international organizing efforts that may also
benefit the Fight for $15 campaign.
The stated goal of Fight for $15 protesters is "$15 and a
union." They've had far more success with $15. The movement has yet
to yield any new dues-paying members in the fast-food industry.
When Fight for $15 launched in November 2012 with worker
protests in New York, a $15 minimum wage was far from mainstream.
Even in initial meetings, some fast-food workers argued a $10
hourly wage was more realistic. President Barack Obama called for
just a $9-an-hour federal minimum in February 2013.
"These workers were told they were crazy," said Kendall Fells,
the Fight for $15 organizing director who is on loan to the
campaign from the SEIU. Now a $15 minimum wage is part of the
Democratic platform.
But the Fight for $15 has mostly stayed away from candidates. It
didn't mobilize to back Hillary Clinton last year, instead keeping
its focus on wages.
And there lies one paradox of the fight. Mrs. Clinton's failure
to win the presidency could be a blow to the ability of franchise
employees to bargain directly with big companies -- the mechanism
that would allow for fast-food workers to unionize.
During the Obama administration, rulings from the National Labor
Relations Board opened the door for national brands to potentially
be considered jointly responsible for employees at franchised
operations. That is a critical step to entering collective
bargaining with a company like McDonald's.
That still-untested pathway is likely to close. President Donald
Trump is expected to appoint regulators who will favor businesses
over union organizers.
The Fight for $15 may not stay on the political sidelines next
time, Mr. Fells said. Fast-food workers and allies marched in red
Fight for $15 ponchos and purple SEIU jackets past Trump
International Hotel & Tower in Chicago to a landmark McDonald's
restaurant Tuesday, an attempt to tie Mr. Trump to the plight of
low-wage workers. That helped attract Black Lives Matter and
Women's March protesters to join the march.
A White House spokesman said the president is committed to
supporting policies that help low-wage workers achieve increased
success and economic prosperity.
A McDonald's spokeswoman didn't directly address the planned
protests but said Monday that the company is committed to providing
jobs and training to thousands of Americans, many of whom are
entering the labor force for the first time.
In 2015, the company raised starting pay for workers at its
company-owned stores, a fraction of all McDonald's locations, to at
least a dollar above the local minimum wage. Earlier this month,
McDonald's said it would provide assistance to franchisees to pay
for self-order kiosks and table-locator technology that make
employees more efficient at serving customers.
The SEIU expects that the wage movement will eventually lead to
unionized workers.
It sees organization of the low-wage food-service industry as
the way to reverse the trend of declining union membership.
Employment at fast-food restaurants grew twice as fast as overall
payrolls last year. Union membership, meanwhile, has declined as a
share of the workforce for three decades.
"The problem for the union is when dues collected from
collective bargaining is your only revenue source, a social
movement like Fight for $15 transfers money from your members to a
broad-based fight," said Andy Stern, the former SEIU president who
left the union in 2010. "You need a different business model."
SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said Fight for $15 remains a high
priority for the union, and it will cut costs elsewhere to ensure
it is funded. Setting $15 as a national benchmark helped
SEIU-represented nursing home workers in Chicago and hospital
workers in Baltimore bargain to lift their starting wages to $15 as
well, she said in an interview.
The Fight for $15 makes "the labor movement understand that you
can make a bold demand," she said. "Demands that actually are going
to change people's lives."
Write to Eric Morath at eric.morath@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 23, 2017 19:04 ET (23:04 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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