To many people, it is almost obscene that the CEO of McDonald’s, for instance, gets a compensation  package worth $13.8 million a year; a giant raise from his 2011 pay of $4.1 million , a pay level that equals 915 full-time, full-year minimum wage workers at McDonald’s. If pay truly reflected the productivity of workers, then presumably if 915 McDonald’s workers went on strike, he would be able to fill in and do their work.

On Thursday, fast-food and other low-wage workers in more than three dozen cities will boost their campaign for a  living wage and justice  with a nationwide one-day strike. The workers and the faith, community and labor groups that back them are calling for a living wage of $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation.

Meet Shenita Simon. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., with her husband and three young daughters. She earns $8 an hour as a shift supervisor at a Brooklyn KFC.

“It’s not enough to support us,”  says  Simon, whose husband also works. “I work hard to provide for my family. In 2012, my overtime hours were routinely paid in the following week’s check as regular hours.”

A recent  episode of the online news program "The Young Turks " took a look at a new fast-food restaurant in Detroit, Moo Cluck Moo, that is doing the right thing and paying its workers a living wage. While the minimum wage in Detroit is $7.40, Moo Cluck Moo pays its workers $12 per hour and is planning to offer benefits soon. The company's owner says that he started paying the higher wage because "it was the right thing to do."

Thousands and thousands of fast-food and other low-wage workers this week have walked off the job in a  series of one-day strikes  in cities across the country. They are demanding a living wage, no retaliation for striking and the right to join unions. Those strikes are continuing today and likely into next week too.

Mark Bittman never steers you wrong when it comes to ideas and advice on food. Now the with a strike by fast food and other low-wage workers set for Monday in several cities, Bittman, Time magazine’s lead food columnist and a New York Times columnist has a question for politicians and corporate execs who oppose paying workers a decent wage and some advice for the rest of us. He’s on the money with both.

The median age of today’s fast-food worker is over 29, and many are trying to support families. One estimate claims that a family of four needs nearly $90,000 a year to get by in the nation’s capital. That’s six minimum wage jobs. Explain to me, please, how you can be pro-family and anti-living-wage simultaneously? (Many Republicans in Congress seem to manage.)

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. 

I was honored to be in New York City yesterday supporting Wendy's workers take to the streets for a living wage. They joined  hundreds of workers in other fast-food joints  across New York City for the largest strike  the fast-food industry had ever seen.