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Fast-food strikes and a push to raise the minimum wage are among the efforts being made by low-wage workers to increase their salaries. Many say that movement may have started last Black Friday when some Walmart workers across the country went on strike. This photo shows fast-food workers in Flint, Mich. on strike in August.

(AP file photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Black Friday 2012. Bargain-crazed shoppers pulling into parking lots at many Walmart stores across the country are met by protesters and striking workers.

They told the holiday shoppers that the world's largest retailer should be paying its cashiers, stock clerks and other low-wage workers significantly more. While the effectiveness of those strikes in meeting the organizers' goals is still open to debate, one thing probably isn't. Many are viewing the workers' action against Walmart a year ago as the opening salvo in the very public battle being waged by low-wage workers to improve their lot.

Often in the retail and service industries, many of the jobs these workers hold were once considered almost temporary employment: jobs for students or something you did until you could find higher paying work. But in recent years, such jobs have become a larger share of the labor force, often replacing jobs lost in manufacturing and other better-paying industries. If lower-paying work is becoming the new normal, many battling on behalf of low-wage workers say salaries should be increased.

In the year since the Black Friday strikes, several efforts suggest the low-wage workers' "movement" is growing. Legislation is before Congress to raise the federal hourly minimum wage to $10.10, from $7.25. (Ohio's minimum wage is $7.85.)

Strikes by fast-food workers across the country, in which they demanded to be paid $15 an hour, have garnered much attention. An increasing amount of research about lower-wage workers continues to be released.

For example, in October, the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign released a study, saying that 52 percent of the families of front-line fast-food workers are enrolled in public programs, like food stamps and Medicaid. Only 25 percent of the labor force as a whole is enrolled in such programs. The study said public assistance to fast-food workers and their families comes to nearly $7 billion a year.

"We need to be honest about the fact that many of the people on these programs are working; and that if these employers could be induced to pay better wages and benefits, it would indeed reduce the costs to the public sector," said Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, which supports raising the minimum wage.

What role will Greater Cleveland play in the growing low-wage workers' struggle? The answer is still forming. The question is worth asking since much of the push to improve salaries for low-wage workers has come from the labor movement. Cleveland has deep ties to the labor movement. Despite decreasing union membership ranks - here and nationally - the area remains a stronghold.

However, Cleveland was not among the 100 cities last Black Friday where strikes and demonstrations against Walmart took place. Nationally, the United Food and Commercial Workers union has been in the forefront of organizing against Walmart on behalf of low-wage workers. Officials for UFCW Local 880 in Cleveland did not respond to The Plain Dealer's request about whether the union intended any local activity, including on Black Friday.

No strikes took place in the Cleveland area in August when fast-food workers in several cities across the country walked off their jobs fighting for higher wages. A local demonstration in support of the strikers was held by labor and community groups in front of a McDonald's on East 55th Street.

Among the 50 or so protesters was Harriet Applegate, who heads the North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor. She said she is "dying" to see organizing around low-wage worker issues come to Cleveland.

"It is a myth that poor people don't work," she said. "They work. They just don't make enough to get by."

Since Cleveland consistently ranks near the top nationally in poverty rates among big cities, Applegate said it is fitting that Northeast Ohio aim to be a major player in the low-wage worker movement.

"We don't want to be out of the loop," she said. "We'd like to be part of the solution."

As Applegate and others demonstrated on the sidewalk in front of the McDonald's, motorists in the lunchtime traffic honked their horns in support. Passersby pumped their fists.

"'They deserve more!''' Pam Rosado, Policy Matters' outreach coordinator, remembers the supporters saying.

She said because fast-food strikes haven't happened here, it doesn't mean that Cleveland isn't ready for them.

"You can't ask somebody to just walk off their job, and they are not unionized," Rosado said. "It takes a lot of preparation behind the scenes. You have to ensure that there is support for these workers when they go out on strike. These decisions are often made on a national level."

Are raises realistic?

Some question the push to significantly raise wages in industries that have always been low-paying -- even when good-paying factory jobs were plentiful.

Bonnie Riggs is a restaurant industry analyst for The NDP Group, Inc., in Rosemont, Ill. She understands the desire of fast-food workers to make more money, but said it is not a realistic goal, given the industry.

Profit margins are very small in an industry that has been struggling since the Great Recession, Riggs said. She said $15 an hour for workers means restaurant owners would have to pass along "double-digit" increases to customers.

"When they tried to pass on a double-digit increase in the 1980s, when we had high inflation, traffic declined by double digit rates," she said. "So we know what will happen.

"If you have got fewer patrons in the restaurant, then you don't need as many workers," Riggs said.

Nick Gurich, state director of Fight for a Fair Economy Ohio, disagrees the industry can't support higher wages for workers. His group, which helped organize the demonstration outside the Cleveland McDonald's, supports raising the minimum wage. The group also demonstrated near a Cleveland Walmart last summer, blaming the rise in lower-wage jobs for causing the median household income for a two-parent family of four in Northeast Ohio to be only about 80 percent of what they need to have a modest standard of living. The finding is based on government data analyzed by Policy Matters and the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC.

Gurich said while many CEOs in the retail and fast-food industries continue to receive ever increasing compensation, workers' salaries are stagnant.

"This isn't about McDonald's or Walmart," he said. "This is about an economy we are creating, which in my opinion, is unsustainable. We cannot have a city where a significant portion of our population is making less than $12 an hour working at these places. It is not how a city thrives."

Hanauer, of the left-leaning Policy Matters, agrees. She said as the number of low-wage workers increases, local economies suffer because these workers have less to spend. She said the UC Berkeley study about how the families of more than half of front-line fast-food workers rely on public programs shows how the rise in lower-paying jobs is becoming a public policy issue. Hanauer said the $7 billion-a-year the fast-food workers receive in public aid could be viewed as a subsidy to those employers who don't pay their workers enough to support themselves. Subsidies have traditionally been given to companies creating "decent-paying" jobs, she said.

Michael Saltsman, research director at the conservative Employment Policies Institute in Washington, DC, which is strongly against raising the minimum wage, said providing public programs for fast-food workers is cheaper than other government aid.

"Taxpayers do have a choice," he said in a news release. "They can either provide partial support to less-skilled employees, who have difficulty finding employment at higher wage rates, or they can provide a 100 percent subsidy when these employees lose their jobs due to an unrealistic wage mandate."

Black Friday is only a few weeks away. Will what happens outside of Walmart stores around the country this year have an impact on the low-wage workers' movement?

Will this Black Friday be significant to the movement?

The Organization United for Respect at a Walmart, or OUR Walmart, the group of Walmart associates who have gone out on strike, won't give details about Black Friday, except to say that "activity" against the retailer is planned.

Kory Lundberg, a Walmart spokesman, didn't seem concerned about the prospect of such "activity." Last year he said only about 100 of 1.3 million associates participated in Black Friday strikes. Sales were also strong, he said.

He said efforts to characterize Walmart as a low-wage employer are unfair. Associates may not make much, but Lundberg said there are opportunities to move up. This year alone, the company will promote 160,000 employees. He said 75 percent of store management team members started as associates.

"You can come in in an entry-level position, and work your way up as far as your hard work and talents will take you," Lundberg said. "A store manager at Walmart, on average, makes $170,000-a-year."

But Jamaad Reed, who works 30 hours a week as an $8.65-an-hour associate at a Cincinnati-area Walmart, disagrees about advancement opportunities. In June, he went out on strike, partly because of pay and lack of advancement opportunities. He said he wanted to become a supervisor, and managers kept leading him on that he would be placed in that position. After becoming active in OUR Walmart, he said he learned the company frequently dangled promotions in front of employees, but they rarely materialized.

"I am not a scrub employee that comes to work, whenever," Reed said. "I am hard-working."

After he went out on strike, Reed said the company retaliated by frequently cutting his hours. Lundberg said that Walmart has a strict anti-retaliation policy.

Though Reed has been at Walmart nearly two years, he didn't go out on strike last Black Friday. Until he went to an organizing session in April, he believed there was no outlet for his frustration. Reed said he sees more of his colleagues joining him in the realization that there is a solution.

"The movement is growing because people are getting fed up," he said. "They are starting to listen more, and soon they will act."