Protests held across the country Wednesday calling for pay of $15 an hour and a union for fast-food and other low-wage workers may signal a reinvented labor movement, said a Duke labor historian.
"When future scholars come to write the story of our times, the Fightfor15 movement may well turn out to be historic. The spirited demonstrations around the country seem to be part of a process of a labor movement that is reinventing itself to meet the challenges of a radically new economy -- and a paralyzed government," said Nancy MacLean, the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke.
Organizers of Wednesday's protests said their efforts began when fast food workers went on strike in New York after Thanksgiving Day in 2012. The Fightfor15 website noted similar strikes and rallies have since expanded to more than 200 cities and 35 countries on six continents.
Seattle and San Francisco have passed laws raising wages to $15 over the next couple years, and efforts are also under way to raise the minimum wage in other cities, according to the website.
Wednesday's protests occurred "against a backdrop of 40 years of falling real wages for millions of Americans," added MacLean, president of the Labor and Working Class History Association.
"As the middle class has been hollowed out by economic restructuring and changes in public policy, more and more working families are finding they just cannot make ends meet and keep body and soul together on what they are paid."
MacLean said that as a historian of the 20th century who focuses on political economy and labor history, she has been struck by how the Fightfor15 campaign "is leading some of the wage-earners who face the toughest conditions to find their voices and call out for help."
"Fast food workers, home health care aides, early childhood educators and others are bringing attention to desperate situations that Washington, D.C., is too gridlocked to fix," she said.