- Ten years ago, fast food workers took to the streets of New York to strike for a $15 minimum wage.
- Since then, 30 states have raised their wages above the federal rate.
- Workers involved in Fight for 15 for years have seen their wages grow, and organizing continue.
A decade ago, Greg Reynoso had a revelation in midtown Manhattan.
Reynoso, 36, was working as a delivery driver for Domino’s in 2012. He was making $7.25, the minimum wage at the time. But on November 29, 2012, he became something else: A worker on strike.
Months before, Reynoso and his coworkers had been approached by organizers with the nascent Fight for 15 movement.
“I didn’t know much about what they were talking about. I just knew that my job was horrible. We were getting paid really bad and we needed a change,” he told Insider. That led to him joining the now-historic strike on November 29, alongside around 200 other fast food workers.
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Today, it’s not unheard of to see workers walking out for better pay and working conditions. But in 2012, low-wage service workers going on strike was a new development in labor organizing. The movement was met with skepticism; many thought workers were being unrealistic or overly optimistic.
“Ten years ago, it was definitely impossible for some people. It was just like, oh no, raising the minimum wage, especially for fast workers, are you crazy? Get out of here,” Reynoso said.
Marching through Manhattan to the McDonald’s on 42nd street was “amazing,” Reynoso said.
“We’re chanting, we’re demanding more money. We are humans. We are men and women who just want better working conditions and a better living wage,” Reynoso said.
Fight for $15 and a Union
Today, Reynoso is a full-time organizer for the New York State Nurses Association, working on political and community organizing. In New York City, where Reynoso first took to the streets, the minimum wage is $15 an hour.
Since the launch of Fight for 15 ten years ago, the federal minimum wage hasn’t budged. But states have taken matters into their own hands, with ballot initiatives propelled by worker groups. Thirty states have a minimum above the federal wage of $7.25, and those higher minimums have led to an estimated $87.6 billion in additional economic output since 2012 — and support 452,000 jobs annually.
The economic and cultural tides have changed since workers first took to the streets in 2012. Over the last two years, wages have skyrocketed nationwide, especially for low wage workers. Unions are sweeping service jobs like Starbucks and Chipotle.
Bart Perez has worked as a cook at McDonald’s for 31 years in California. During the Great Recession, he noticed management was cutting his shifts. That’s why he’s been organizing with Fight for 15 since 2011.
“I wasn’t able to take care of the necessities I had due to not having enough days and hours of work,” he told Insider through a translator. At the time, workers’ demands included getting back some of their hours, and a pay bump to $15 an hour from $8.
The process of organizing hasn’t always been easy for Perez, but he didn’t want to “throw away” his longevity at the company. Most importantly, he didn’t want anyone else to come into a similar job — including his children one day — and deal with the same issues.
“This was my opportunity to make a difference,” he said. In California, where Perez works, the minimum wage is now $15 an hour for employers with 26 or more employees. Workers there also lobbied for a law passed in September that will give fast food workers a say in their pay, working conditions, and hours.
But workers say the battle — while obviously focused on wages — is also about respect. That’s something that’s been thrown into relief when minimum wage jobs suddenly became “essential” during the pandemic. Part of the rethinking of work has been a concerted push to make sure blue-collar jobs receive traditionally white-collar benefits — and are treated with the same respect.
“The movement has given so many people the ability to fight for something just. To fight for dignity,” Perez said. “That has been one of the most important things — the respect that every person and that every worker deserves.”
Terrence Wise, a Taco Bell worker and a leader in the Missouri Workers Center, has worked with Fight for 15 for 10 years. He brought his then-seven-year-old daughter to his first strike in 2013, where he kept ducking behind his sign, which he described as “hiding.” That prompted his daughter to ask: “Daddy, are you scared?”
“In that moment I looked at my daughter and I was like, am I more afraid of being homeless and not being able to take care of my daughter, or of my employer?” he said. “And at that moment it kind of clicked for me — I’m gonna fight for my child, I’m gonna do whatever it takes for my child.”
The next day, after years of asking, he finally got a raise at his job. When he first began organizing, he said, he made $7.47 an hour. Today, he earns $16.
For all of the Fight for 15 movement’s successes over the last decade, there’s still a long way to go. Nearly a third of American workers still make below $15 an hour, and workers of color in the South particularly face low wages.
“Victory looks different in different parts of the country and organizing efforts will look different as well,” Wise said. “There’s a lot of work still left to do, and a lot that still hasn’t changed, but we’re hopeful because of what we’ve been able to achieve as well.”
