When it comes to surviving in Silicon Valley, the working poor face a merciless choice.
“You can be homeless or pennyless,” Albert Brown III, said. “If your salary pays for a place to live, that is all it pays for. Or you can live in your car and get a 24 Hour fitness membership,” said security contractor Brown, who has experience with both choices.
He was among more than 300 union members and supporters attending serial Labor Day rallies in San Jose and Santa Clara demanding better wages, benefits and working conditions. The rallies, put together by SEIU Local 521, were part of a nationwide organized-labor campaign on the nation’s 124th Labor Day holiday.
Outside a McDonald’s restaurant on North First Street in San Jose, protesters agitated for $15 minimum wage, then stormed through the restaurant, banging drums and calling on bullhorns for better pay — to the bewilderment of Opening Manager Chris Sin.
Marching on San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail next to Dell, demonstrators scolded the tech giant for dumping janitorial contractors last year after workers won the right to unionize, and for replacing them with lower-paid, part-time workers. At at the Community Child Care Council of Santa Clara County, they demanded speedier contract negotiations for workers who unionized two years ago.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/04/labor-day-union-rallies-demand-raises-decry-employers/
