Food service and janitorial staff at the Pentagon are going on strike Wednesday morning, opening a new front in the ongoing fight to get President Obama to end the federal government’s practice of paying poverty wages to contract employees at federal facilities.The Pentagon employees’ walk-out follows similar strikes by service workers at federally owned, privately operated facilities in Washington, D.C., such as the Ronald Reagan Building,Union Station, and the Smithsonian museum food courts. It also comes after wage theft charges against employers at the Reagan Building and the train station.The expansion of the campaign to the Pentagon comes almost exactly eight months after the first strikes led to retaliatory firings by employers, indicating that efforts to intimidate workers did not succeed.The workers in question are on the payroll of companies like Dunkin Donuts and Taco Bell, but in a sense their real employer is the federal government. The government hires fast food, retail, security, and janitorial companies to service contracts for federal properties.Those contracts give the government a chance to set wage and hour terms for the on-the-ground workers who will actually cook the food and haul the trash. Federal contracts of this sort actually prop up more low-wage jobs than notoriously low-paying companies McDonald’s and Walmart combined. At present, three in four of these workers make less than $10 per hour, and four in 10 rely upon public assistance despite working a full-time job. The same contracts funnel a total of $24 billion per year to the CEOs of the companies that pay their workers so poorly to staff public facilities.Unlike millions of other low-wage employees, the ones fulfilling federal service contracts can get a raise without an act of Congress. The workers, backed by a group of about 17 House progressives, want President Obama to exercise his executive authority to improve their pay and get taxpayers out of the business of paying poverty wages.
there is a price for not so much Pres. as an effect but "we the people" we know that another go around will create even harder opposition to things to come where congress is needed as well as those things on the desk now that they are sitting on. he has to consider all ramifications of his future acts without congress like Christie they will seek revenge.
The eight-month federal worker campaign has played out in the shadow of much largercoast-to-coast strikes by fast food and Walmart workers, who likely hope their activism has emboldened a president who once famously pledged to walk picket lines alongside workers.
i think that would be a mega pump for the party if he were to honor that promise, i suppose the SS objects to that do to security and the cost to favor one group can alienate others as to "why not my cause"?
there is so much lurking in the wings that most have no idea they exist but he can't do it alone or prevent future road blocks by republicans still teaming from the first loss haven't got to the second one yet but after the1st gear up for round to of green eggs and ham and you will not like them.
remember he said "yes we can" not "yes i can"
