When members of Congress introduced legislation this week raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, it was in direct response to demands from people like Frances Holmes, a 55-year-old McDonald’s worker from St. Louis who is paid just $9 an hour.

Frances is one of thousands of workers in the Fight for $15 movement who, for the past six years, organized, protested and went on strike demanding $15 an hour and the right to join a union. Frances and her co-workers shined a light on a moral crisis in the American economy: millions of people work hard but don’t get paid enough by big corporations like McDonald’s to provide for their families.

Before the Fight for $15 movement, few in Washington ever paid attention to people in industries like fast food. But by sticking together on the job, workers have convinced politicians, voters and employers all across the country that $15 an hour is the bare minimum anyone needs to survive, no matter where they are from or what their race is.

The legislation introduced this week is more than just another bill in Congress – it’s a marker of how the Fight for $15 movement has upended the power imbalance in America’s low-wage economy, where many workers previously had no power at all.

Fight for $15 campaign is a comeback for labor movement's role in elections Read more

And the key to the movement’s success has been the fearlessness and courage of workers like Holmes who, even without the protection of a union, have joined together and acted like a union anyway.

Unions have historically empowered working people to have a voice on the job and a say in how they’re treated, making it possible to win decent pay and benefits that could support a family and lift communities. The periods in American history when the most workers had unions on the job – the 1950s and 1960s – were also the years when the country’s middle class was the biggest.

Over the past three decades, however, powerful companies and politicians have aggressively stripped away workers’ unions in an effort to cut pay and cut jobs. And unsurprisingly, economic inequality has ballooned during this time, with corporate profits soaring as wages flatline.

It’s this crisis of inequality that inspired workers in the Fight for $15 to take bold action and walk off the job, coming together in a movement even without the formal protection of a union. And against big odds, they raised their voices about what they need to support themselves, they went on strike, and they stuck together.

The results have been historic.

After 200 fast-food workers walked off the job for the first time in November 2012, strikes soon spread nationwide, first to Chicago and then to other cities in the midwest, and within a few years walkouts were hitting hundreds of cities across the country.

Now it seems like we’re living in an entirely different world from the one that existed six years ago. A $15 minimum wage is in place or planned in Seattle, Washington DC, Minneapolis, St Paul, California, New York state and Massachusetts. Major private sector employers like Facebook, Target and Amazon have pledged to increase their minimum wages to $15 an hour.

All told, more than 22 million workers have won more than $68 billion in raises since the Fight for $15 started. One-fifth of the country is now covered by plans for a $15 minimum wage.

The Fight for $15 has proven that sticking together and acting in union is the only way to challenge the rigged economy that keeps working people of all backgrounds – black, white and brown – behind.

But to really make a dent in inequality, elected leaders in Congress and across the country need to do more than raise the minimum wage – they also need to reverse decades of attacks on workers’ unions and give all working people the opportunity to join together in a union, no matter where they work.

By making it possible for more people to join unions, elected leaders can empower workers all across the economy to speak up and organize for good jobs, just as brave workers in the Fight for $15 have done. And with the power of a union, workers across the country can have not just the bare minimum, but a real shot at a better life.

Mary Kay Henry is president of the Service Employees International Union



