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Workers Strike in 270 Cities to Support $15 Minimum Wage

The biggest demonstrations yet in the fight for $15.

Child care, home care, fast food, and other contract workers in 270 U.S. cities are set to stage the largest walk out yet today in support of a $15 minimum wage. The strike is part of a now three-year campaign by the union-backed group Fight for $15. The group’s representatives say today’s action is timed a year to the day of the 2016 presidential election, and is meant to demonstrate the political power of the movement.


The workers advocating for a $15 an hour minimum wage are a “voting bloc that can no longer be ignored,” the group said in a statement. Currently, the federal minimum wage is set at $7.25, though a number of states and cities have higher wage floors.

"The money I bring home can barely take care of my rent," Brooklyn KFC worker Alvin Major told Reuters as he participated in a 200-person protest that blocked street traffic in the New York City borough. "We need a wage that could take care of our basic necessities.”

Though Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has not come out in support of a federal $15 minimum wage, the former secretary of state tweeted her support of today’s protests. “Fast-food, home care, child care workers: Your advocacy is changing our country for the better. #Fightfor15,” she wrote.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was on hand at a Fight for $15 rally on Capitol Hill this morning. In June, the presidential candidate introduced a bill to raise to the national minimum wage to $15.

“What you are doing and workers all over the United States are doing, you are having a profound impact,” Sanders said. “People are raising the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. And you know who started it? You did. You started the movement.”