This week in the War on Workers: Fast food workers are underpaid, poorly treated, and fighting back

Here's a fact for you: Tyree Johnson, who works at two different Chicago McDonald's restaurants and has worked at McDonald's for two decades, would have to work a million hours to make what the CEO of McDonald's made last year. Johnson earns $8.25 an hour, minimum wage in Illinois. The company's CEO made $8.75 million, and:

Shareholders, not employees, have reaped the rewards. McDonald's, for example, spent $6 billion on share repurchases and dividends last year, the equivalent of $14,286 per restaurant worker employed by the company. At the same time, restaurant companies have formed an industrywide effort to freeze the minimum wage, whose purchasing power is 20 percent less than in 1968, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that advocates for low- and middle-income workers.

This is the backdrop against which workers like Johnson are getting involved with the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago and organizing'and striking'in New York City. Sarah Jaffe follows up with some of the workers who went on strike in New York on Nov. 29:

Pamela Flood, whom I met last week leading chants on the picket line outside that same Wendy's, told me that her boss at Burger King, who used to refer to her by her first name, is back to calling her Miss Flood.

Truvon Shim took the stage with Flood at both the fast-food workers' rally on strike day, and Thursday's rally of low-wage workers from across the city. He came to tell his story of losing everything in his Far Rockaway home to Superstorm Sandy, but also had his own victory to share.

Shim had asked his boss at Wendy's for a few days to deal with the storm's aftermath, but when he called to be added back to the schedule, was told there were no available hours. However, this week, along with an organizer from New York Communities for Change (NYCC), the group that began the fast-food worker campaign, Shim met with his general manager and was promised he'd get his hours back.

Another worker at the same Wendy's was told she'd be fired when she joined the strike, but got her job back under pressure from a rally that included City Councilman Jumaane Williams.

Along with Walmart workers, car wash workers, port truck drivers, warehouse workers, and others across the country, these fast food workers are part of a resurgence of militant action by low-wage workers who have for years been getting hammered by the race to the bottom corporate economy. Their numbers are small compared with the number of low-wage workers in this country, but these worker-activists are risking having their hours cut or being fired, when they're struggling to make ends meet to begin with. Every time one of them speaks out or walks out, it's an act of immense courage. And it looks like a wave that's building.

(Continue reading below the fold.)