Social media is a really important part of this, as is transnational capital. Workers who work for McDonalds or Walmart understand that they have very little relative power locally - although they put their bodies on the line, they block access to stores, they sit down in the middle of streets to get their point across - but they understand that if workers are doing this all around the world, then even massive corporations have to sit up and take notice. And they have.

Historian Annelise Orleck explains how a low-wage labor movement went world-wide - as farm, retail and service workers at the base of global capitalism connect around their shared struggle, and challenge the system of corporations and consumers keeping them in poverty, and building what could emerge as a transnational left force.

Annelise is author of We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages from Beacon Press.