More than 200 low-wage workers representing fast-food employees, home health care workers and others marched at noon Wednesday in midtown Kansas City as part of the expanding national wage movement known as Fight for 15.
Marchers hoisted placards with messages such “Jobs with Justice” and “Good Jobs, $15 for all” while raising their voices with various chants, including, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, these poverty wages have got to go!”
Protesters — who had begun the morning with a similar rally at 6:30 a.m. at a McDonald’s at 64th Street and Troost Avenue — gathered three-deep at the corner of 37th and Main streets in front of the non-profit The Whole Person Inc. to call attention to what they they consider to be the sub-par wages paid to home health care workers.
Lisa Miller of Kansas City was among them. Age 52, she said she works only 20 hours per week at $8.66 an hour, without sick pay, benefits or vacation pay. That works out to a yearly wage of just over $9,000, far less than the U.S. poverty level for a single person. In the U.S. in 2014, the poverty mark for single-person household was $11,670.
LaJua Manning, 25, of Kansas City supports herself and her 1-year-old daughter on $10 an hour she earns as an at-home certified nursing assistant. She said she works full-time and more when she can get the hours, but still brings home only about $12,000 per year,