In New York, Fast-Food Workers Test Their Negotiation Skills Fast-Food Wages and Unionization

On November 28, dozens of employees at several fast-food restaurants in New York City walked off their jobs and demanded better pay and unionization. In doing so, they launched what is believed to be the largest coordinated campaign in the United States to unionize fast-food workers from different restaurants, reports Steven Greenhouse in the New York Times.

The campaign, called Fast Food Forward, is backed by community and civil rights groups, religious leaders, and a labor union. Forty full-time organizers have enlisted workers at restaurants such as McDonalds, Wendys, and Taco Bell to protest low wages and retaliation against several workers who backed the campaign. At one McDonalds, 14 of the 17 employees scheduled to work the morning shift reportedly had gone on strike.

New York Communities for Change

Jonathan Westin, the organizing director at the community group New York Communities for Change, which is helping to organize the effort, told Greenhouse that many fast-food workers resort to public assistance because they cannot survive on their salaries. The minimum wage in New York State is about $7.25 an hour, and the median pay for fast-food workers in New York City is about $9 an hour, or about $18,500 per year, according to the State Labor Department.

New York Communities for Change has successfully unionized low-wage workers at a number of New York car washes and supermarkets. But Fast Food Forward is in its early stages and has not yet developed a long-term strategy.

Efforts to Unionize Fast-Food Workers

According to City University of New York sociology professor Ruth Milkman, efforts to unionize fast-food workers are rare because of the logistical difficulties fast-food jobs have very high turnover that makes organizing difficult. But she said the fact that the campaign was taking place in New York, a city with deep union roots, could lend it some success.

Cornell University labor relations professor Richard W. Hurd said organizers were likely to have more success securing wage and benefit gains from national fast-food restaurants than union recognition, as parent companies were likely to fight unionization movements that could spread beyond New York.

From the workers perspective, the appeal of unionizing is easy to understand. As we have discussed in previous issues of the Negotiation newsletter, negotiators in a weak position can gain leverage by forming a coalition with other relatively weak parties. Working as part of a coalition, individual members can harness the resources they need to face tough opponents.

Negotiating Coalitions

Labor unions are the most obvious example of negotiating coalitions. If an individual employee made demands of its employer, the company could threaten to hire someone else. But when employees bargain collectively, they largely avoid the need to compete with each other and typically achieve a more competitive compensation and benefits package than they would have negotiated on their own. Coalitions such as unions can also benefit the party across the table by creating a more efficient negotiation process. In this free special report Dispute Resolution, Working Together Toward Conflict Resolution on the Job and at Home, the editors of Negotiation cull valuable negotiation strategies and curate popular content to provide you with a concise guide on how to improve your dispute resolution skills.