Fast food workers – like many low-wage workers – scramble to do whatever they can to make the impossible math of low wages work. They struggle to find childcare and transportation that work with their unpredictable schedules. They take on second and third jobs, trading sleep and time with family for the ability to keep their kids fed and roofs over their heads.

Fast food workers value their work; this study shows that they are just calling for the ability to consistently work enough hours to make ends meet. And while we live in a society that claims to value work deeply, one has to ask – do we?

This report makes clear the hidden underbelly of precarity at work that underlies the crisis facing California’s low-wage workers, and the devastation wrought by unreliable work hours and unstable incomes. To lift low-wage workers out of grinding poverty, and its consequences, these workers need livable wages that keep pace with the cost of living, as well as stable work hours, safeguards against abrupt and unfair firings, and protection from retaliation.

Download the report