Some of the fast food workers who have held repeated protests and one-day strikes in recent months are a little different than the rest: They work for federal contractors in Washington, DC, museums and office buildings, while making the same poverty wages as fast food workers nationwide. Now,
220 of those workers are different in a new way. They're going to be represented by a union in contract negotiations.
“People have wondered whether this is just a media-driven phenomenon,” said Paco Fabian, a spokesman for Good Jobs Nation, an advocacy group. “Here’s an example of something that is tangible.”
Food-service workers at the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of American History will be represented by Unite Here in contract negotiations with the Compass Group, which operates restaurants in the two museums, Fabian said.
With a veto-proof majority of the Washington, DC, city council having just voted through a minimum wage of $11.50 and groups collecting signatures for a ballot initiative increasing it to $12.50, the union should enter negotiations with some bargaining power to bring workers above the minimum wage that's likely to be District law a year or two in the future.
President Obama could—and should—sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay their workers a living wage, something close to 2 million federal contract workers don't get. But a union for 220 low-wage food service workers is a historic step forward.