Strike for Day Seeks to Raise Fast-Food Pay

From New York to several Midwestern cities, thousands of fast-food workers have been holding one-day strikes during peak mealtimes, quickly drawing national attention to their demands for much higher wages.

What began in Manhattan eight months ago first spread to Chicago and Washington and this week has hit St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit and Flint, Mich. On Wednesday alone, workers picketed McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Popeye’s and Long John Silver’s restaurants in those cities with an ambitious agenda: pay of $15 an hour, twice what many now earn.

These strikes, which are planned for Milwaukee on Thursday, carry the flavor of Occupy Wall Street protests and are far different from traditional unionization efforts that generally focus on a single workplace. The national campaign, underwritten with millions of dollars from the Service Employees International Union, aims to mobilize workers — all at once — in numerous cities at hundreds of restaurants from two dozen chains.

None of the nation’s 200,000-plus fast-food restaurants are unionized.

The strategists know they want to achieve a $15 wage, but they seem to be ad-libbing on ways to get there. Perhaps they will seek to unionize workers at dozens of restaurants, although some labor leaders scoff at that idea because the turnover rate among fast-food employees is about 75 percent a year. Or the strategists and strikers might press city councils to enact a special “living wage” for fast-food restaurants. Or perhaps by continually disrupting the fast-food marketplace from counter to counter across the country, they can get McDonald’s, KFC and others to raise wages to end the ruckus. The protests’ organizers acknowledge that yet another goal is to push Congress to raise the federal minimum wage and pressure state legislatures to raise the state minimums.

“These companies aren’t magically going to make our lives better,” said Terrance Wise, who earns $9.30 an hour after working for eight years at a Burger King in Kansas City, plus $7.40 an hour at his second job at Pizza Hut. “We can sit back and stay silent and continue to live in poverty or, on the other hand, we can step out and say something and let it be known that we need help.”

In explaining why her union is pouring dozens of organizers and significant sums into the effort, Mary Kay Henry, the S.E.I.U. president, said, “Our union’s members think that economic inequality is the No. 1 problem our nation needs to solve. We think it’s important to back low-wage workers who are willing to stand up and have the courage to strike to make the case that the economy is creating jobs that people can’t support their families on.”

The protests in Detroit on Wednesday had a particularly poignant backdrop, given that the city has declared bankruptcy. Dozens of workers, joined by members of various unions and community groups, picketed in front of McDonald’s and Taco Bell, shouting chants like, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, $7.40 has got to go” — the amount per hour many of them are paid.

Restaurant industry officials say the strikers’ demand for $15 an hour is ludicrous because it amounts to more than twice the federal minimum wage. (The median pay for fast-food workers nationwide is $9.05 an hour.) Industry officials say a $15 wage might drive many restaurants out of business and cause restaurant owners to hire fewer workers and replace some with automation — perhaps by using more computerized gadgets where customers punch in the orders themselves.

Scott DeFife, executive vice president of the National Restaurant Association, said the one-day walkouts were not really strikes, but rather public-relations-minded protests that have caused very few restaurants to close.

“It is an effort to demonize the entire industry in order to make some organizing and political points,” he said, adding that only a small percentage of restaurant jobs pay the minimum wage. He said most of those positions were held by workers younger than 25.

Jaclyn Trop contributed reporting.

Air Controller Strike in France Causes Cancellations

PARIS — The scene at Charles de Gaulle Airport on Tuesday underscored an all-too-familiar trope about France.

With air traffic controllers on strike, tourists from around the world arrived in Paris to find themselves stranded, many unable to make connecting flights to other parts of the Continent. The three-day strike, which began Tuesday, sought to protest a proposal to accelerate the integration of air traffic management systems across the Continent. But for some it mainly served to highlight France’s stubborn singularity, which has made the country increasingly uncompetitive in European and global marketplaces.

“These strikes always happen, especially during the months of June and July,” said Britt-Marie Stromer, a 70-year-old Swedish retiree. “It doesn’t work like this in other European countries.”

Some 1,800 flights — roughly half of all scheduled flights — were canceled across the country Tuesday, while hundreds more were delayed and disrupted by the spillover in Europe. French aviation officials said they expected as many as 50 percent of flights to be canceled again Wednesday until at least midday Thursday. The controllers are protesting Brussels’s plans to accelerate the integration of the European Union’s fragmented air space, meant to improve transportation efficiency and lower the cost of air travel.

The terminals at Paris area airports were largely calm, because most airlines had managed to warn passengers well in advance. But many travelers still had not gotten the word.

But many passengers said they could not comprehend why France, one of Europe’s biggest tourist destinations, appeared so resistant to changes that economists say have the potential to bolster travel and, with it, economic growth.

“I’m on vacation, which is supposed to be a relaxing time,” said Brittany Beaton, a 28-year-old social worker from Canada who had planned to fly to Barcelona. An alternative flight Air France offered her was too expensive, she said, “so I’m going to try to take a train.”

French airports, airlines and traffic controllers tend to have the reputation of being more strike-prone than their European peers. In reality, analysts say, a number of similarly disruptive labor actions have been undertaken in recent years by workers in Germany, Spain and Britain.

Nonetheless, Tuesday’s events seemed to follow mounting opposition by workers in other sectors of the French economy who continue to resist structural changes aimed at shaving labor and operating costs.

While it was hard to tell on Tuesday, the government of France’s Socialist president, François Hollande, says it actually strongly supports the idea of a unified regional airspace. But French officials do not like the way Brussels is trying to cajole its 27 member states toward that goal.

Since the fall, Siim Kallas, the European transport commissioner, has been trying to turn up the heat on member states like France that are seen to be dragging their feet. It was a decade ago that European officials proposed legislation to replace a crazy quilt of air traffic control fiefs that officials say account for about $6.5 billion in unnecessary costs each year. The measure was passed by the European Parliament in 2009 and subsequently endorsed by France and all other member states.

Last year, Mr. Kallas threatened legal action and fines against member states for not meeting key milestones of the legislation. On Tuesday, he proposed ways to to inject fresh momentum into the process by granting significant new decision-making powers to Eurocontrol, an agency in Brussels that is already responsible for coordinating air traffic flows across the Union and an additional 12 nearby countries.

His proposals include a measure to separate national regulation of air travel from traffic management services, as well as a mandate that state-owned monopoly providers of navigation, weather forecasting, surveillance and other services be privatized. But Mr. Kallas’s proposals require approval from the European Parliament and member states.

It is these proposals that have angered Paris. In an interview Tuesday, France’s transport minister, Frédéric Cuvillier, said the initiative amounted to “regulatory harassment.” He accused Brussels of trying to rush through one-size-fits-all changes that did not take into account differences in the way member states have historically managed their own airspace.

“It is necessary that these things happen in a spirit of respect for differences in national organization,” Mr. Cuvillier said. “We have to give it time.”

And just to show France was not alone, Mr. Cuvillier said he had persuaded his German counterpart, Peter Ramsauer, to sign a joint letter to Mr. Kallas, asking him to delay presenting his new proposals to the European Parliament.

But Mr. Kallas said France, Germany and others have already had plenty of time.

“Our airlines and their passengers have had to endure more than 10 years of reduced services and missed deadlines,” he said Tuesday in Strasbourg. “We need to boost the competitiveness of the European aviation sector and create more jobs in the airlines and at airports.”

For passengers like Alexander Eliassem, a 38-year-old Norwegian, patience with France’s philosophy was wearing thin on Tuesday. He and his exhausted family were off to search for a place to stay for the night after their Lufthansa flight to Oslo was canceled.

“I have a 9-year-old child with me so, yes, it’s a little difficult,” Mr. Eliassem said. He said the airline would partly reimburse him, but only if he stayed in a hotel of no more than three stars in the notoriously generous rating system. “This is France, so that isn’t saying much.”

Catherine Chapman contributed reporting.

Greeks Stage General Strike Against Austerity

The Greek protest came as workers in Asia, including Bangladeshis infuriated by the lethal collapse of a garment factory, demonstrated in cities including the capitals of Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines. In Istanbul, riot police officers sprayed throngs of people with water and tear gas as they gathered for a rally, defying an official ban.

Labor unions in Spain called for rallies in more than 80 cities, news reports said, while protests were also scheduled in Portugal. In France, the bitterly divided labor movement called for hundreds of demonstrations across the country, with rival union confederations holding separate marches.

But, initial reports said, most protests went off quietly, including those in Athens.

On the streets of Paris, the far-right National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, held its annual May 1 march through the city center, seeking to draw support from disaffected voters at a time when French growth has faltered, unemployment is at record levels and the Socialist government is caught between demands from the right for greater cuts in public spending and complaints from the left that it is not socialist enough.

Ms. Le Pen’s supporters waved French red, white and blue flags outside the Palais Garnier opera house in central Paris. She said the country was “sinking in an absurd policy of endless austerity.”

Inveighing against the influence of big business, the European Union in general and Germany in particular, she ascribed French woes to “always saying yes to Brussels; to Berlin, of course; and in all circumstances to the magnates of high finance.” The crowd seemed smaller than it was a year ago, when the country was seized with election fever. Since then, however, many Europeans have sensed a deepening malaise with no prospect of a rapid return to a sense of well-being.

Such are Europe’s woes that the newly elected Pope Francis urged business and political leaders on Wednesday to do more to create jobs.

“And here I think of the difficulties that, in various countries, today afflict the world of work and businesses,” he told tens of thousands of people gathered for his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.

“I think of how many, and not just young people, are unemployed, many times due to a purely economic conception of society, which seeks selfish profit, beyond the parameters of social justice,” the pope said. “I wish to extend an invitation to solidarity to everyone, and I would like to encourage those in public office to make every effort to give new impetus to employment.”

The nationwide walkout in Greece was called by the country’s two main labor unions, which represent two and a half million workers and have led resistance to three years of economic overhauls that have cut salaries and pensions while increasing taxes.

With public anger giving way to resignation after a seemingly inexorable cycle of belt tightening in exchange for foreign rescue loans, the unions called for mass participation in the strike to protest “a catastrophic austerity drive” that has driven unemployment above 27 percent — the highest rate in the European Union — and to slightly less than 60 percent among those younger than 25.

The unions’ appeal failed to draw a large crowd, however, with about 10,000 Greeks taking to the streets of the capital, according to police estimates, for a demonstration that was both peaceful and one of the smallest in recent months. “There were no problems,” a police spokesman said as roads reopened to traffic and municipal garbage trucks swept discarded protest leaflets and coffee cups.

Although the strike brought much of Greek daily life to a halt on Wednesday, public transit services were running on a limited basis to allow Greeks to join rallies. In Athens, as in other major cities, police units were out in force to guard against violence that has marred demonstrations near the Parliament building in the past.

Ferries remained in ports and trains in depots, but flights operated normally because air traffic controllers did not join the strike.

The strike came just a few days after officials in the euro zone approved the release of 2.8 billion euros, or $3.7 billion, in rescue financing for Greece after Parliament ratified a new raft of economic reforms, including a politically contentious decision to lay off 15,000 civil servants by the end of next year.

The financing had been due in March but was delayed after talks between the government and officials of Greece’s troika of foreign lenders — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — broke down over the troika’s demands for the civil service cuts.

The country’s governing coalition, which has come under strain as it pushes its painful austerity agenda, must now enforce agreed-upon measures, laying off 2,000 civil servants by the end of June and pushing forward a stalled project to privatize state assets. It faces strong opposition by its main political rival, the leftist party Syriza, which wants Greece to renege on its loan agreement with the troika and is neck and neck in opinion polls with the conservative New Democracy, the head of the shaky three-party coalition.

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund have extended to Greece two foreign bailouts worth $317 billion over the past three years, meting out the aid in installments in exchange for austerity measures and overhauls.

Niki Kitsantonis reported from Athens, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Rome.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article overstated the effect of the worker strike in Greece. Schools were already closed for the Greek Orthodox Easter break; they did not close because of the strike.

Los Angeles and Long Beach Ports to Reopen After 8-Day Strike

As the strike dragged into its second week, both sides had come under increasing pressure from local officials to end the dispute, which had threatened to derail the Southern California economy during the holiday season. Officials from the Port of Long Beach estimated that $650 million in trade has been idled each day of the strike. A federal mediator arrived on Tuesday to help broker a deal.

“I am pleased to announce that an agreement has been reached between labor and management that will bring to an end the eight-day strike that has cost our local economy billions of dollars,” Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles said in a statement released Tuesday night. “With the strike now ending, we must waste no time in getting the nation’s busiest port complex’s operations back up to speed.”

Although only about 600 clerical workers had been participating in the strike, they managed to shut down 10 of the 14 shipping container terminals at the two ports because thousands of longshoremen from the union would not cross the picket lines.

“This victory was accomplished because of support from the entire family of 10,000 members in the harbor community,” Robert McEllrath, the president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said in a statement announcing the agreement.

Neither the union nor the terminal operators offered details of the new contract agreement on Tuesday night.

Steve Getzug, a spokesman for the Harbor Employers Association, which represents the terminal operators, said the union voted on the proposal from the employers on Tuesday shortly before the federal mediator arrived. He added that the deal included “some compromise on staffing issues that were important to the employers.”

“And, importantly, a deal has been reached,” Mr. Getzug said. “The longshoremen expected to return 7 a.m., ready to get the cargo moving again.”