Fast-food workers throughout the United States are striking for more wages.
According to Reuters, employees in 60 cities throughout the United States have gathered for the one-day national event. Martin Rafanan a community organizer in St. Louis told Reuters employees at McDonald's and Wendy's can't live on the salaries they're currently being paid.
"If you're paying $7.35 an hour and employing someone for 20, 25 hours a week, which is the average here, they're bringing home about $10,000 a year. You can't survive on that." Rafanan said.
Missouri's minimum wage is $7.35 an hour.
"Unless we can figure out how to make highly profitable companies pay a fair wage to their workers, we're just going to watch them pull all the blood, sweat, tears and money out of our communities," he said.
Thursday's strike at franchise restaurant chains such as McDonald's and Burger King is the latest development in a year-long struggle to increase wages in the industry Reuters reported.
The event has also closed restaurants in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Raleigh, and Seattle.
In addition to fast food restaurants, Macy's Inc, Sears Holdings Corp, and Dollar Tree were expected to join in on the fight Reuters reported.
Fast food employees are interested in creating unions in an industry which does not have any such group. Employees also do not want retaliation from their employers, but want to negotiate how they can be paid more in the amount of $15 an hour. This would be an increase of $7.75 from $7.25, which is the current minimum wage on the federal level.
According to Reuters, McDonald's earned $5.47 billion in profits last year.
