A new poll released today finds that 80% percent of Americans—including 62% of Republicans and 80% of Independents—support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour and indexing it to the cost of living. It was last raised to $7.25 an hour in 2009.

The release of the poll came as low-wage workers and community, faith, union and other allies are staging a National Day of Action calling for passage of Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013.

Click here to sign our petition asking Congress to raise the minimum wage.

A McDonald's worker fainted today at New York City's 181st Street and Broadway location after working in the kitchen without air conditioning for several hours. The woman felt ill and asked to leave but says her boss wouldn't allow her to go home because there was no backup. Tweets and photos (see after the jump) surfaced of the woman leaving with paramedics. Outraged by the working conditions, fellow workers walked off the job in protest. 

You may have heard by now about the McDonald's budgeting tool that assumes people only pay $20 for health insurance and doesn't account for food, gas or other living expenses. 

Want some truth with those fries? Want to super size it? McDonald's this week is being mocked (rightfully so) for its nonsensical budget tool that assumes a person has two jobs (sure, who doesn't these days?), pays $20 a month for health care and $0 for heating. Don't rub your eyes, that's a big fat zero. Oh, and the budget also ignores food, child care, gas and other obvious necessities.

When payday rolls around, more and more workers aren’t getting paper paychecks or direct deposits to their checking accounts, but instead are finding their wages on prepaid cards.

The new trend—especially  prevalent in low-wage industries—saves the employer money,  and means big (and mostly unregulated) profits for the banks and financial institutions that issue the cards. It also eats big chunks of the workers’ pay though a bevy of fees they must pay to access their accounts.

Fast food workers at more than 60 restaurants in Detroit walked off the job Friday. This may be the largest fast food strike in American history, involving more than 400 workers from McDonald's, Long John Silver's, Burger King, Popeyes and KFC. Some locations were forced to shut down. At issue is workers' right to form a union and an increase in base pay to a minimum of $15 per hour.

In his latest piece at Salon, Josh Eidelson talks about a planned walkout by fast-food workers in Chicago. 

The walkout began, the Chicago Tribune reports, at 5:30 a.m. local time with workers from some McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts stores walking off the job. The ultimate goal of the walkout is to support the Fight for $15 campaign, whose goal is to secure a wage of $15 per hour for workers. Also expected to join the walkout were workers from Subway, Macy's, Sears and Victoria's Secret.

Just minutes after yesterday's protest in New York by striking workers, McDonald's announced that the franchise owner accused of exploiting temporary workers in the country on J-1 visas will be selling his three stores and will no longer be associated with the company, the Nation's Josh Eidelson reports. The workers from Latin America and Asia who worked at the Pennsylvania fast-food restaurants allege that store owner Andy Cheung provided them with sub-standard employer-owned housing to live in, forced them to work shifts of up to 25 consecutive hours and threatened them with retaliation if they complained or refused to work.

Following a strike last week at several Pennsylvania franchisee locations, McDonald's workers will rally in New York on Thursday and announce a March 26 mobilization outside the corporation's Chicago headquarters. The workers are students in the United States on J-1 visas from Asia and Latin America who say they were given sub-standard employer-owned housing to live in, shifts of up to 25 consecutive hours and were threatened with retaliation if they complained or refused to work. The National Guestworker Alliance has been working closely with the students.

Sarah Seltzer writes for Alternet and other online publications and sends us this.

Trader Joe’s, the popular food chain, which caters to the socially conscious set, had been falling short of its healthful and “progressive” image recently—by refusing to sign onto an agreement to protect tomato pickers. But after a tireless campaign by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), the company has agreed to sign on, and planned protests in front of a Trader Joe’s were canceled.