The Fight for $15 low wage movement has long had two goals: winning a $15 -an-hour wage for low-paid workers and a union for fast-food workers. On wages it has been a major success – seven states have enacted minimum wage laws scheduled to reach $15 – but so far it has made little progress unionizing fast-food workers. That could soon change.

A Manhattan-based union local that works closely with the Fight for $15 has launched an effort to unionize Chipotle and McDonald’s workers, getting workers at more than 50 restaurants to sign pro-union cards. “We’re running a campaign for workers in an industry that has been abusing its workers,” said Kyle Bragg, president of the local carrying out the unionization drive, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union. “These workers want a union. We’re organizing in order to lift workers and improve their lives.”

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Until now, the Fight for $15 – which was underwritten by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – hadn’t begun a formal unionization effort at fast-food restaurants. When Fight for $15 began in late 2012, its original strategy was to exert so much pressure on McDonald’s that the fast food giant would agree to sit down and discuss wages and other matters and perhaps promise not to resist unionization efforts. But McDonald’s has refused to talk with the Fight for $15’s leaders.

With its latest effort, Local 32BJ, a powerful local union with 175,000 members, hopes to make clear to Chipotle and McDonald’s that it is intent on unionizing their restaurants in New York, and they shouldn’t oppose that effort. Union officials say a majority of the hundreds of fast-food workers organizers have approached have signed cards supporting a union.

Jeremy Espinal, who works at a Chipotle in Greenwich Village, said he supports unionization because managers often treat workers with little respect. “The managers try to dehumanize you and try to beat you down mentally as much as they can so they can overwork you and make you feel you’re never doing enough,” said Espinal, a junior at Hunter College.

Espinal said the work includes lots of lifting and is far harder than he had anticipated. “I tore my achilles heel at Chipotle,” he said. “I cut off part of my thumb. I have burn marks on my arm.” He also complained that after managers learned he was an outspoken union supporter, his hours were cut from 25 a week to 11.

Princess Wright backs unionization at her McDonald’s in downtown Brooklyn. She said the managers “make it seem like they’re for you, but there’s a lot of wage theft and playing around with our hours. If we start at 11, they’ll say we started at 11.15. Sometimes you work 48 hours a week, and they pay you for only 40.” She complained that managers want employees to be available to work any time of the week, and that they sometimes scheduled her to work certain hours even though she had told managers that those hours conflicted with her college classes.

Workers at various Chipotles and McDonald’s said managers sometimes failed to comply with New York City’s new Fair Workweek Law, which requires giving fast-food workers two weeks’ advance notice of their work schedule and paying them premiums when their hours are changed with little notice or they are called in at the last minute.

Helped by Local 32BJ, more than 30 current or former Chipotle workers filed complaints with the city about not receiving premium pay for schedule changes, prompting the city’s office of consumer and workplace protections to file a lawsuit against Chipotle, seeking more than $1m in restitution for violating its Fair Workweek Law.

With Chipotle having adopted the motto “food with integrity”, Bragg said, “Chipotle has branded itself to be this different fast-food chain that strives for excellence with their workers, but you can’t achieve that if you treat your workers like trash. We want to help that company achieve what they want to be.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Chipotle has branded itself to be this different fast-food chain that strives for excellence with their workers, but you can’t achieve that if you treat your workers like trash.’ Photograph: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Laurie Schalow, Chipotle’s chief reputation officer, said: “Chipotle has been working cooperatively with the city to ensure we have systems and processes in place to comply with” the Fair Workweek Law. She added that the company’s employees “know that Chipotle is committed to complying with all laws, rules and regulations”.

One obstacle to unionizing fast-food restaurants is that many are run by franchisees, and it could be labor-intensive and expensive to seek to unionize and secure union contracts from franchisees that have just a few restaurants. Then even if the Fight for $15 got a majority of workers at dozens of restaurants to vote to unionize, the fast-food companies and their franchisees might drag their feet for years before agreeing to a first contract.

The more than 40 Chipotle restaurants in New York where Local 32BJ has begun organizing efforts are all owned and run by the parent company. That makes it easier to pressure an image-conscious parent company and secure union contracts covering more restaurants.

“We haven’t assigned any one strategy to get a union,” Bragg said. “The goal is to get the employer to the table and bargain in good faith.”

Chipotle officials declined to address the unionization push, but said Chipotle gives workers “industry-leading benefits such as tuition reimbursement up to $5,250 per year, competitive health benefits and quarterly bonuses for all employees”.

The McDonald’s Corporation said: “Together with our independent franchisees, we pride ourselves on building a workplace that supports crew members and their ambitions.” McDonald’s added that it “recognizes the rights under the law of individual employees to choose to join – or choose not to join – labor organizations”.

McDonald’s said it has begun an ambitious program to train more than 2,000 franchisees and 850,000 employees to make sure workers are treated with dignity and to combat bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment.

Jahaira Garcia, a union supporter who works at a Chipotle on Second Avenue in Manhattan, said sexual harassment was a problem at her restaurant. “The men are too touchy,” she said. Garcia, a senior at City College, said she has talked to many workers “my age, 17, 18, 19, 20” and gotten them interested in the union, and they “started to talk to an older group in their 40s. The younger group has motivated the older people to join.”

“One reason I want a union,” Garcia continued, “is a lot of people don’t have papers, and they’re really scared to talk about not being paid fairly and sexual harassment and not getting enough hours and being treated badly.”

Espinal agreed that unionization can be a powerful tool for workers who feel powerless. “A majority of people who work at Chipotle” in New York “are minorities or immigrants or children of immigrants”, he said. “They are groups that never felt empowered. The most difficult part is to change the mentality that these people have. This effort is about educating them and letting them see this is stuff that’s been done before and this is something we have to do with each other to help each other because the company isn’t looking out for us.”