Dozens of protesters arrested in Fight for $15 demonstrations

The rally was part of a larger national day of action in which many employees have walked off their jobs to participate in rallies happening at almost 20 major airports and McDonald’s restaurants to call attention to low wages, according to organizers.

Hundreds more protesters, including fast food workers, airport workers, Uber drivers and messengers, took to the streets as part of the Fight for $15 movement.

Workers at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport are expected to walk off the job over union rights and an hourly wage of $15.

Protests also were held Tuesday in several other cities around the USA, and arrests were reported in NY and Detroit.

Protesters starting off East Oakland marched along International Boulevard on Tuesday, mirroring what others across the country were fighting for by chanting and holding signs that said: “Fight for $15 Day of Disruption”.

Among the arrested was Jose Carillo, an 83-year-old McDonald’s worker. Protest organizers say that hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested; in Detroit, for example, police arrested 39 people during Tuesday morning’s protests outside a local McDonald’s.

Detroit police say they arrested about 40 protesters who blocked traffic.

“The Fight for $15 has shifted the way our country talks about economic and racial injustice and inequality in our democracy”, said Marvette Hodge, a home care worker from Richmond, Virginia, who says she makes $9 an hour, in a news release last week.

Currently, she makes $13.45 per hour and is limited to 30 hours per week by the agency that employs her. But it’s an important reminder that organizing works-and we’re going to need to cling to that thought and dig in if we’re going to have a chance at moving any direction but backward.

The president-elect has flip-flopped on the issue, at one point stating that “the minimum wage has to go up” to “at least $10” and at another labeling wages “too high“.

Chris Geehern, spokesman for the trade group Associated Industries of MA, said business owners who have had to grapple with paid sick time, a rising minimum wage, and a gender pay equity law “feel as if they’re under siege”.

It includes workers at McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants.

Hospital employees and home care aides, whose wages often fall below $15 per hour, are also joining Tuesday’s protests. The SEIU came out early in support of Hillary Clinton, despite her backing for a $12 minimum wage, and altogether the AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions spent an estimated $150 million on their failed efforts to elect Clinton and other Democrats. They said what they are being paid is not enough to live on. “Big corporations have been exploiting lower-wage workers for decades, forcing people to work long hours and tough schedules without receiving fair holiday or sick pay, and without receiving a living wage”. Some states have passed higher minimums; Missouri’s rises to $7.70 an hour in January.

The Legislature last increased the minimum wage in 2014, when then-Gov.