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.

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.”

In the biggest strike yet in the growing fast-food/low-wage workers’ actions demanding a voice, thousands of workers making the minimum wage or just slightly more walked off the job in several cities today, demanding a living wage, no retaliation for striking and the right to join unions.

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.