Fast-food, low-pay....

The fast-food workers who have been walking off their jobs illustrate a central fact of contemporary work life in America: As lower-wage occupations have proliferated in the past several years, Americans are increasingly unable to make a living at their jobs. They work harder and are paid less than workers in other advanced countries. And their wages have stagnated even as executive pay has soared.

As measured by the federal minimum wage, currently $7.25 an hour, low-paid work in America is lower paid today than at any time in modern memory. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation or average wages over the past nearly 50 years, it would be about $10 an hour; if it had kept pace with the growth in average labor productivity, it would be about $17 an hour.
      

In contrast, the median hourly pay of fast-food workers — most of whom are in their 20s or older and many of whom are parents — is less than $9 for front-line workers and just above $9 when shift supervisors are included. Not surprising, the strikers demanded better pay — $15 an hour — and the right to organize without retaliation.

      

Also not surprising, they have been motivated to act by the inaction of the nation’s leaders. Republicans are against a higher minimum wage, and Democrats are too timid. Legislation proposed by Congressional Democrats would raise the hourly minimum to $10.10 over nearly two-and-a-half years from the date of enactment. President Obama has proposed a similarly gradual increase to $9 an hour. Congress and the White House also squandered a chance to try to improve workers’ earnings prospects when they let right-to-organize legislation die years ago.

      

Activism among fast-food workers is almost certain to continue and is likely to spread to other underpaid workers. Most of the jobs lost during the recession were midwage jobs, while most of the new jobs have been lower paying. In addition to food-service jobs, big growth areas today include home care and retail sales, with median hourly wages of roughly $10 and $11, respectively. According to the Labor Department, six of the 10 occupations that are projected to add the most jobs by 2020 pay wages at the lower end of the scale.

      

At some point, as strikes continue, well-paid executives in low-wage industries will have to confront the fact that low worker pay is at odds with their companies’ upbeat corporate images and their self-images as top executives. (The chief executives of McDonald’s and Yum Brands, which owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC, are among the nation’s highest-paid corporate leaders.)

      

Political leaders will likewise have to confront their own failures. The strikers did not ask for Washington’s help, but there is a lot that Congress and the Obama administration could do. In addition to raising the minimum wage, there needs to be more enforcement of fair labor laws, including crackdowns on employers that misclassify employees as salaried workers, independent contractors or interns in order to deny them overtime, benefits or other pay. It would help, too, for Congress to end the foot-dragging around implementation of a law passed years ago requiring disclosure of the ratio of chief executive pay to that of a company’s work force.

      

The Great Recession and the slow recovery have reinforced trends toward inequality and inadequate pay that were evident even before the last downturn. Fast-food workers are fighting back, in just cause.

The New York Times’s Editorial Board