Fast food workers to strike again

Boston fast food workers are planning to demonstrate at two Burger King restaurants on Thursday, part of a global strike taking place in 150 US cities and 33 countries to call for $15-an-hour wages and the right to unionize.

Employees of McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Burger King, are expected to participate locally. This will be the fourth time local fast food workers have walked off the job in the past year, organized by MassUniting, a local labor coalition financed in part by the Service Employees International Union.

Fast food workers across the country -- two-thirds of whom are adults -- have been raising public awareness of their situation since the first coordinated job action in New York City in late 2012. With median hourly wages of $8.69 an hour, and only 13 percent getting employment-related health benefits, more than half of fast food workers’ families rely on public assistance, according to a 2013 report by the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.