“Fight for $15” rallies for higher pay, right to unionize

Labor advocates pushing to raise the federal minimum wage have an unexpected new ally: the richest man in world.

As the “Fight for $15” kicks off its latest campaign, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos on Tuesday urged “our competitors and other large employers” to join the e-commerce giant in hiking worker pay, adding that “we listened to our critics.” His call came as Amazon announced that it would raise the company’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. 

The move came as hundreds of fast-food workers allied with Fight for 15 demonstrated in Michigan. Several people were injured when a pickup truck hit a group of protesters near a fast-food restaurant in Flint in what police said appeared to have been a accident.

“We just came from the hospital. Several people were getting released,” Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry told The Associated Press. “Three still are being observed.”

Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer was among those participating in the protest. She wasn’t injured and a post on her Twitter account said she’s “incredibly sad that so many people were hurt.” 

Part of an effort to elect pro-union candidates in November, walkouts are planned in Milwaukee on Wednesday and Chicago on Thursday. On Thursday, higher education workers are expected to join fast food workers in a protest in Miami, Henry said.

Amazon, however, on Tuesday was no longer on the other side of the argument, with the company drawing praise from union activists.

Amazon’s pay hike “shows the Fight for $15’s momentum is unstoppable,” Lachelle Slaughter, a McDonald’s worker in Detroit said in a statement. “By joining together, speaking out and going on strike, we’ve convinced companies, politicians and the public that $15 an hour is the bare minimum anyone needs to survive,” added Slaughter, among the workers participating in protests Tuesday afternoon in cities including Detroit and Flint, Michigan.

Fight for $15, a coalition of fast-food, retail and other workers, sprung up in New York City in 2012 and has since expanded into a global movement with activists in more than 300 cities around the world.  

Bezos also drew praise from frequent critic Sen. Bernie Sanders, with the Vermont independent calling a news conference on Tuesday to congratulate the entrepreneur for “doing exactly the right thing.” 

Sanders says he now looks forward to working with Bezos on their shared goal of raising the federal minimum hourly wage to $15 from its $7.25. The federal minimum wage has not been raised in nearly a decade.

Beyond being “enormously important for Amazon’s hundreds and thousands of workers,” the company is leading the way for other profitable corporations in the retail and fast-food sectors to follow suit, said Sanders, who also cited the Fight for $15 movement.

In addition to scattered strikes planned for this week across the U.S., the Fight for $15 campaign said activists plan to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors in 11 states in an effort to elect candidates in November who will support workers’ rights.