Fight for $15 Leader Paid $146,000 to Fight, Not Protest

By now readers of this blog have heard about worker centers and the worker center called Fight for $15 whose mission is to establish a $15 minimum wage for fast food workers. Anecdotally, the Fight for $15 leader (who is the subject of this post) said that $15 was chosen as their preferred minimum wage not because of solid economic theories but because it “made sense.” According to him, “$10 was too low and $20 was too high so we landed at $15.”

Back to your regularly scheduled programming. Fight for $15 staged a protest against McDonalds in Chicago in mid-May. The leader of Fight for $15 is Ken Fells. When Mr. Fells was asked whether he was paid to attend the “March on McDonalds” in May, he said, “No I am not.” This is parsing words at its finest.

Fight for $15 is a worker center affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Fight for $15 is not a union, and thus does not have to file paperwork detailing its income or expenses. The SEIU, on the other hand, is a union and must detail its income and expenses on a Form LM-2. The SEIU’s 2016 LM-2 lists Mr. Fells as its “deputy organizing director” who is “on loan” to the “Fight for $14” campaign with a salary of $146,000 per year.

Later in the interview, Mr. Fells divulged some of the tactics his Fight for $15 activists employ to pressure fast food restaurants. For example, when a restaurant fires an employee, “McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King – these places specialize in selling burgers. We specialize in fighting. So it’s hard for them to fight us and sell burgers at the same time,” he said. “So if they were to fire one of our workers or cut one of our worker’s hours, we try to have a reasonable conversation with them because we’re very reasonable individuals.” If that doesn’t work, then we’ll bring in 150 people and shut their store down day after day after day.”

To date, Fight for $15 has spent millions of dollars trying to disrupt the fast food industry without a single union organizing victory to its credit.

Matt Austin owns Austin Legal, LLC, a boutique law firm based in Ohio that limits its representation to employers dealing with labor, employment, and OSHA matters. You can reach Matt by calling him at (614) 285-5342 or emailing him at Matt@MattAustinLaborLaw.com.