Fast Food Rights Action: Saturday 29 March

Fast Food Workers Are Hungry For Justice!

Please Support Second National Day of Action

Meet 12 noon, Saturday 29 March 2014

Outside McDonald’s, Western Road, Brighton

Sussex LRC and others backed the first 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.  Please join us on Saturday 29 March 2014 for the second national day of action.  We shall be leafleting outside McDonald’s from 12noon to 1pm and then deciding whether to move to another fast food outlet.  The action will last from 12-2pm.

“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.

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.