Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) rallied with McDonald’s workers striking in Nevada on Friday, where she told a crowd that workers at the franchise should be paid “livable wages.”
At a strike in Las Vegas organized by the activist group Fight for $15, the California senator marched with protesters before addressing a crowd, speaking about her own experience working as a former student.
“I worked at McDonald’s. I was a student when I worked at McDonald’s,” she said. “There was not a family relying on me to pay the rent, put food on the table.”{mosads}
“But the reality of McDonald’s is that a majority of the folks who are working there today are relying on that income to sustain a household and a family,” Harris said. “We have got to recognize that working people deserve livable wages.”
Numerous fellow Democrats vying for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination have appeared alongside striking workers in support of higher wages and increased benefits in recent months, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who marched with McDonald’s workers in Iowa earlier this month.
Harris, Sanders and several other Democrats have come out in support of the Fight for 15 movement, which urges Congress to pass a law raising the national minimum wage to $15 per hour.
This article was updated at 10:10 p.m. to correctly note that the Fight for $15 organized Friday’s march.