U.S Fast Food worker strike

I'll try and throw in something positive from the news every now and then and here's the first installment.

Protester arrested outside Mcdonald's in Philadelphia

In the last year fast food workers have been becoming increasingly active in their demands to receive a living wage (In public policy, a living wage is the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their needs that are considered to be basic. This is not necessarily the same as subsistence, which refers to a biological minimum, though the two terms are commonly confused.). Last week protests took part across over 100 U.S cities during which hundreds of people were arrested.

The protests are starting to show an effect, although Federal policy to introduce a national minimum of $10.10 an hour has stalled several states have introduced their own minimum wages in the last year. Progress is also being made to enable restaurant workers to unionise (currently legislation prevents them from unionising on a large scale due to the franchise model adopted by the chains). A (strongly contested) decision made by the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Mcdonald's could be held jointly liable for employment and wage violations committed by it's franchisors. Such decisions are the first step in greater protections for restaurant workers as a whole.

Now I mentioned that this was good news but I guess it depends on who you are and what you view as the long term outlook of such actions. There is a big disagreement over the effect of raising the minimum wage, some believe that it will actually have a negative effect on poverty in that companies will lay off workers as they face higher labor costs. I personally don't buy this claim, the same thing was said about the introduction of Obamacare and jobs have been on the increase since then. Having said that it's hard to tell what's really going on with the U.S economy as there is a lot of smoke and mirrors and hard data about types of employment isn't available.