In New York City, mayoral candidate and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn joined several hundred demonstrators outside a McDonald’s in midtown Manhattan, holding a sign that read “On Strike: Wages Too Damn Low.”
“Better pay will put more money into local businesses and spur economic growth,” Democratic Representative George Miller of California said in a statement.
Robert Hiltonsmith, a policy analyst at Demos, a liberal think tank, said that if the minimum wage had kept up with productivity and inflation, it would be closer to $17 per hour.
He added that in many cases, low pay wasn’t justified by a worker’s lack of marketable skills.
“Seventy percent of these fast-food workers are aged 20 or over, so they’re not teenagers, and of that 70 percent, about a third of them have college degrees,” he said.
“So it’s not that they don’t have skills – in many cases, the jobs aren’t there for them.”