Fast food workers are on strike in New York and Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Missouri, and Flint, Michigan this week. Fast-food workers from McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, and many more fast food chains walked off the job today to protest for higher pay.

For those earning minimum wage, it's a struggle. Someone that makes $7.25 an hour will gross $15,080 for 52 weeks of work a year. That's only assuming someone can get 40 hours a week, but employers of low-wage workers are frequently restricting the number of hours employees can work. This keeps them on technically part-time to avoid the cost of benefits that would be obligatory for full-time.

Lisette Ortiz, 27, of Rockaway, who works at a McDonald's in Downtown Brooklyn said "I want for us to be respected. $7.25 is not enough. I live with my dad. I would like to get my own apartment. You can't! It's impossible!"

Her comments are similar to most part-time burger flippers, pizza deliverymen and fry cooks in America. These paychecks cannot sustain life in the city.

The workers are organized by groups such as New York Communities for Change, Jobs with Justice and Action Now. The Service Employees International Union is providing money to the campaigns and helping to organize the strikes.

The American fast-food and retail workers on strike are due to the need for higher wages. The protest starting today seeks wages of $15 an hour, more than double from $7.25. They want to end abusive labor practices.

ith the Occupy movement and discussion about the 1 percent, people are much more aware about the increase in inequality," Janet Currie, an economics and policy affairs professor at Princeton University, in Princeton, New Jersey, said during an interview. "There are a lot of people right at the top of the distribution who are doing better than that segment of the population has since the 1920s, and that's driving a lot of the income inequality."