British McDonald’s workers go on strike for higher pay

Applauding them for “making history”, the Labour leader said: “They are standing up for workers’ rights by leading the first-ever strike at McDonald’s in the UK”.

Union and Labour party members also staged a protest outside the company’s headquarters in East Finchley, London, on Saturday. Here’s what they said.

About 40 McDonald’s employees in Cambridge and southeast London took to the streets for a £10 per hour minimum wage and an end to zero-hours contracts, which do not give workers any guaranteed amount of work, reported the Guardian.

“There is many challenges, and we are increasing our membership week on week”. “There are managers telling us we can be arrested for striking, that we can lose our jobs for going on strike”, she said. Some workers are working full-time and are still living in poverty. Despite working four shifts a week of up to eight hours, he is homeless and sleeps on an airbed in a friend’s flat. “We tell them a union is people like them organising together and using their strength in numbers to win things they couldn’t do on their own”. “What we’re seeing now where they’re becoming increasingly common in schools, hospitals in government offices has come from the failure to recognise what was happening in the fast food industry”. If they complain, they are easily replaced. This is intolerable. How have we stood by and let young workers be treated like this?

“But no longer will it happen”.

“I’ve put my heart and soul into working for this company for over a year”, said one such staff member, turfed out last week.

“We need better conditions and that all starts here”. We’ve already got thousands of others preparing to join us – other stores are organising at this point already, but haven’t gone public yet.

“But McDonalds are refusing”.

In the case of McDonald’s, Hodson says, the flexibility argument doesn’t really fly.

“Workers are having to sofa surf”. Thousands of workers across the country – and in countries across the world – are revolting against a decaying economic system that does nothing to support people instead breeds anxiety and insecurity. Our young people staying on colleague’s floors and sofas.

But striking workers told the Star they hoped for workers at many more branches to join a “second wave” of action.

The strike is thought to be the first official walkout of McDonald’s workers in Britain.