Fast Food Rights: Hungry For Justice

Frank Loveday, BFAWU speaks at next Brighton & Hove LRC meeting

7.30pm, Thursday 27 February 2014

Lord Nelson Inn, Trafalgar Street, Brighton

Brighton & Hove LRC meets every other month for a friendly discussion around a table in the backroom of the Lord Nelson Inn, which is five minutes walk from Brighton railway station, straight down Trafalgar Street.  All welcome at these friendly and informal meetings.  Please download the poster above to display or use as a flyer to publicise this meeting.  Fast food workers are worth decent pay and conditions.

Sussex LRC and others backed the National Day of Action for fast food workers by organising a protest outside McDonald’s in Western Road, Brighton on Saturday 15 February 2014.  Staff, customers and passersby showed great interest in the campaign leaflets, and support for an end to zero hour contracts.

“This campaign is about bringing to an end the heinous zero hours contracts in operation across the industry.  It is about people receiving pay that they can live on; it is about fighting for a pay rise for workers.  We are talking about hugely profitable companies here — they can afford to pay their workers a decent wage.”  Ian Hodson, national president of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU).

Working in fast food restaurants means low pay, insecure jobs and poor employment conditions for most people.  The Fast Food Rights campaign aims to recruit fast food workers into a trade union so that they can fight collectively for decent pay, secure contracts and respectful treatment.  All trade unionists are asked to support this day of action which will see protests outside different branches of McDonald’s, Burger King and Costa nationwide.  Come along to join us outside McDonald’s in Western Road, Brighton from 12noon to 2pm.

McDonald’s, the leader of the UK’s fast food industry, boosts its mega profits by forcing 90% of its workforce to accept zero hours contracts.  In 2012, fast food chains in the UK saw sales rise to a staggering £6.9 billion.  Despite these huge profits, the average UK fast food worker earns just £5 an hour (PayScale figures, January 2014).  By employing so many young workers, fast food chains exploit the age exceptions in the UK’s minimum wage laws to increase their already huge profits.  They also take advantage of most young people having little or no experience of the advantages of organising together in trades unions.   Support this campaign which is part of an international movement of fast food workers fighting for their rights, from New Zealand and Australia to the USA and now the UK.