This week, as the White House enter­tains a dis­cus­sion of ​“work­er voice,” there is new evi­dence from pub­lic opin­ion polls, leg­isla­tive pro­pos­als, pub­lic tes­ti­mo­ny and activ­i­ty from Con­gress to city halls that the fight to empow­er and prop­er­ly pay the work­ers in low-wage ser­vice jobs con­tin­ues to grow.

Low-wage Amer­i­cans — the 42 per­cent of work­ers mak­ing less than $15 an hour — know all too well that they don’t just want more; they need more sim­ply to sur­vive at the lowli­est ver­sion of the Amer­i­can stan­dard of liv­ing. Increas­ing­ly, they are press­ing their demands more force­ful­ly, pos­si­bly invent­ing a new form of union­ism as they per­se­vere, orga­niz­ers suggest.

It’s a safe bet that most work­ing peo­ple would like a pay raise. They are also often reluc­tant to ask for one, let alone demand a dou­bling of their hourly rates.

And increas­ing­ly, these work­ers say, they want and need a union. They also want — and say they are will­ing to reg­is­ter and to vote for — polit­i­cal can­di­dates who will fight for their needs.

From the begin­ning, the Fight for $15 has includ­ed a demand for the right to form a union with­out intim­i­da­tion, but the demand for $15 an hour pay stole the lime­light. Now some work­ers who have been active in the Fight for $15 move­ment real­ize they already have an orga­ni­za­tion, even if it’s not the stan­dard mod­el union.

The Nation­al Employ­ment Law Project, a pro-work­er advo­ca­cy and research group, recent­ly com­mis­sioned a sur­vey of low-wage work­ers that showed strong sup­port for both thrusts of the Fight for $15, includ­ing increased inter­est in reg­is­ter­ing and vot­ing if their wage and union rights were clear­ly sup­port­ed by at least one pres­i­den­tial candidate.

NELP exec­u­tive direc­tor Chris Owens was impressed by the survey’s find­ings that half of low-wage work­ers had heard of the Fight for $15 and that work­ers were more will­ing to engage in pol­i­tics with the right can­di­date mes­sage. ​“What I feel that’s real­ly dif­fer­ent,” she said, ​“is the height­ened aware­ness that unions could make a dif­fer­ence, and there is also height­ened aware­ness when peo­ple see work­ers like them­selves put them­selves on the line, take risks for high­er wages and a union, there will be more inter­est in form­ing unions.”

Six­ty-nine per­cent of low-wage work­ers favor rais­ing the min­i­mum wage to $15 an hour, and the same frac­tion thinks it should be eas­i­er for them to form a union, while 72 per­cent approve of unions in gen­er­al. That’s a high­er approval than among the gen­er­al pub­lic, despite an increase in gener­ic approval of unions revealed in an August Gallup poll to 58 per­cent, up 5 points from last year. Black work­ers (87 per­cent approval) showed the strongest sup­port for unions, fol­lowed by young work­ers (82 per­cent), then Lati­nos (79 per­cent), but strik­ing­ly 77 per­cent of low-wage work­ers in the South, long con­sid­ered a region hard to orga­nize, favored unions.

Fight for $15 nation­al orga­niz­ing direc­tor Kendall Fells is impressed not only with the strong inter­est in a union but also with work­ers’ sense that they already have a union. ​“If you’d asked me three years ago before the first strike, I would have been sur­prised [at the cur­rent lev­el of sup­port for a union], but it’s been clear that they already see it [Fight for $15] as their orga­ni­za­tion and call it a union. Low-wage work­ers now see belong­ing to an orga­ni­za­tion is the way to defend them­selves on the job.”

“I would say these work­ers are already in a union,” he con­tin­ued. ​“What will be need­ed is a mech­a­nism to fund it, once we get McDonald’s to talk, and I think that will hap­pen soon.” McDonald’s is under pres­sure from work­ers and gov­ern­ments around the world, he not­ed, and ​“they’re going to have to come to the table” to solve their prob­lems. Fells believes that McDonald’s will ulti­mate­ly see the val­ue of work­ers being orga­nized as it strug­gles to dig out of its difficulties.

This is a new form of ​“21st cen­tu­ry union­ism,” unlike the unions of the 20th cen­tu­ry orga­nized at work­places from auto plants and steel mills to nurs­ing homes, Fells says. ​“The tan­gi­ble dif­fer­ence is the size of the orga­ni­za­tion, and the scale of the move­ment. The scale is so broad and var­ied. Then there is the dif­fer­ence of work­ers being in the streets, will­ing to risk their jobs to get what they need, and the gelling of pro­gres­sive move­ments around the low-wage workers.”

This new infor­ma­tion is part of the mes­sage low-wage work­ers are also deliv­er­ing around the coun­try in near­ly 30 cities this week, start­ing on Tues­day, before ​“peo­ples’ wage boards,” pan­els of civic or polit­i­cal lead­ers. They are mod­eled on the wage boards that Gov. Andrew Cuo­mo set up ear­li­er this year in accord with New York law to review wage stan­dards for fast food work­ers in response to work­ers’ demands. Based on the tes­ti­mo­ny, he raised the fast food restau­rant wages in New York to $15 an hour. While few oth­er states have laws autho­riz­ing such offi­cial boards, the work­ers hope their tes­ti­mo­ny will sway law­mak­ers to raise min­i­mum wages.

Gen­er­al­ly low wage work­ers par­tic­i­pate below aver­age rates in elec­toral pol­i­tics, but the sur­vey by Vic­to­ria Research found that near­ly two-thirds of low-wage work­ers who had reg­is­tered to vote would be more like­ly to cast a bal­lot if there were a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date sup­port­ing $15 and a union. Among those work­ers who are not reg­is­tered, 65 per­cent said they would be more like­ly to reg­is­ter and vote for such a candidate.

The bat­tle over low-wage work­er union­iza­tion has unsur­pris­ing­ly spilled over into Con­gress and the cam­paigns, with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty already endors­ing a $15 an hour min­i­mum wage for its plat­form. Mean­while, Repub­li­cans in the Sen­ate are pro­mot­ing leg­is­la­tion that would over­turn a recent Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board deci­sion that fran­chisors, like McDonald’s Cor­po­ra­tion, and fran­chisees are like­ly to be con­sid­ered joint employ­ers with respon­si­bil­i­ty for work­ers’ wages and treat­ment on the job. Democ­rats, like Sen. Sher­rod Brown (D‑OH), are try­ing to stop the move.

On Tues­day Sen. Bernie Sanders (D‑VT) and Rep. Mark Pocan (D‑WI), with sup­port from Brown and oth­er pro­gres­sive Democ­rats announced intro­duc­tion of a new Work­place Democ­ra­cy Act (much less ambi­tious than Sanders’ pre­vi­ous leg­is­la­tion under the same title and despite its sim­i­lar­i­ties, even less com­pre­hen­sive than the Employ­ees Free Choice Act that the labor move­ment had hoped would pass in the ear­ly years of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion). It would per­mit work­ers to gain recog­ni­tion of their union through either a demon­stra­tion of major­i­ty sign­ing sup­port or through an elec­tion, and it would give either labor or man­age­ment prompt recourse to medi­a­tion and then arbi­tra­tion if the two par­ties could not reach agree­ment on a first con­tract rea­son­ably quickly.

In addi­tion to the depri­va­tion imposed on work­ers and their fam­i­lies, orga­niz­ers of low wage work­ers have argued that big, prof­itable cor­po­ra­tions like Wal­mart and McDonald’s — the nation’s two largest low-wage employ­ers — have effec­tive­ly relied on tax­pay­er sub­si­dies in the form of pub­lic safe­ty net pro­grams, from food stamps to Med­ic­aid, pub­lic hous­ing aid to child­care, that their employ­ees turn to because they do not earn enough. Yet those com­pa­nies could afford to pro­vide the wages and ben­e­fit pack­ages need­ed for a decent life, as they do in coun­tries like Den­mark and Australia.

A straight­for­ward wage increase to $15 an hour would most direct­ly reduce the pub­lic sub­si­dies to com­pen­sate for the harm and expense caused by pover­ty and inequal­i­ty result­ing from big com­pa­nies pay­ing low wages. But in cas­es where that may be dif­fi­cult, sup­port­ers of under­paid work­ers can pur­sue oth­er strate­gies. For exam­ple, on Wednes­day Chica­go-area res­i­dents from com­mu­ni­ty groups affil­i­at­ed with Nation­al Peo­ple’s Action ral­lied before the Cook Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers cham­bers to pro­mote the Cook Coun­ty Respon­si­ble Busi­ness Act.

The act would apply to big cor­po­ra­tions or groups of fran­chis­es that have more than 750 employ­ees in Cook Coun­ty who earn less than $14.57 an hour, now the ​“liv­ing wage” that busi­ness­es ser­vic­ing con­tracts with or receiv­ing direct sub­si­dies from the coun­ty must pay. Under the Respon­si­ble Busi­ness Act, they would have to pay a fee to the coun­try for every work­er below that lev­el or else pay the liv­ing wage. The for­mu­la for the fee would work like this: the num­ber of low-wage employ­ees X 750 X the num­ber of dol­lars below the liv­ing wage per year. A com­pa­ny pay­ing 1000 work­ers $10.57 an hour would thus pay 1,000 X 750 X 4, or $3 mil­lion a year to com­pen­sate some­what for expens­es they cre­ate for the pub­lic and to more effec­tive­ly deal with those prob­lems in the future. Sup­port­ers say the bill could raise $500 mil­lion over the first four years.

The com­mu­ni­ty groups, using pri­mar­i­ly a study of the effects of Walmart’s low wages pre­pared by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic minor­i­ty staff of the House Health, Edu­ca­tion and Wel­fare com­mit­tee, argue that pover­ty result­ing direct­ly from low wages con­tributes to crime, health prob­lems, and depressed local com­mu­ni­ty economies. They esti­mate the cost to the coun­ty econ­o­my is about $1.2 bil­lion a year, includ­ing the need for increased pub­lic expens­es. In addi­tion to com­pen­sat­ing coun­ty gov­ern­ment, the bill would con­cen­trate coun­ty spend­ing of the new rev­enue on pre­tri­al ser­vices, hous­ing, fam­i­ly aid, and health care. A poll con­duct­ed for the bill’s pro­po­nents showed that 38 per­cent of reg­is­tered vot­ers strong­ly sup­port­ed the Respon­si­ble Busi­ness Act, and 24 per­cent sup­port­ed it somewhat.

On Wednes­day, Der­rell Odom, 36, father of two, Marine vet­er­an of two tours of duty in Iraq, and an employ­ee of Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en who start­ed work­ing in fast-food restau­rants when he was 19, will tes­ti­fy before a ​“peo­ples wage board” in Atlanta. ​“My mes­sage to the pow­ers that be,” he says, ​“is that we can’t sur­vive on $7.25. I have one bed­room in an apart­ment with three room­mates. It’s just a strug­gle to sur­vive. I often don’t even know where my next meal will come from.”

That is dou­bly true because his man­ag­er often offers him as lit­tle as 15 to 20 hours of work. Then, last week, when Odom worked more than 40 hours, the man­ag­er forced him to take his over­time hours not with the legal­ly required pre­mi­um pay, but at the straight rate, trans­ferred to this week’s paycheck.

Such treat­ment demor­al­izes most work­ers, but not Odom, even as he tries to pay off $7,000 in col­lege loans and help to sup­port his kids. ​“They want to keep you down, make you think they don’t need you,” he says. ​“With a union we’ll have some­one to make our voic­es heard.”