“For 49 years, I’ve been asking for a dollar,” AU food service worker Willie Joiner said at yesterday’s rally for Compass workers as hundreds of chanting UNITE HERE members and their supporters marched in front of the World Bank. “I was working at AU, I would bring home $47 a week to feed my child. Forty-nine years, I’ve been waiting on that dollar. I saw it at the table this year. I saw it, but I’m going to tell you right here that that doesn’t feed my grandbaby. That doesn’t pay my rent. I will not wait another 49 years.” The local workers were joined by busloads of UNITE HERE members from locals 25, 54 and 100. The workers are demanding a $20 per hour minimum for Compass workers who serve elite clients in DC. Compass cafeteria workers “serve the powerful people in buildings right over here behind me like the World Bank,” said UNITE HERE Local 23 President Marlene Patrick Cooper. “At this big annual spring meeting that’s going on right now, they’re serving drinks to folks who are trying to eliminate global poverty while we’re out here to make sure that we’re not getting poverty wages. It’s a joke. World poverty; let’s take care of home first, Compass.” Father Brian Jordan of St. Camillus Church led the crowd, shaking their fists and fingers at the World Bank, chanting  “Shame on you! Shame on you!”
– report/photos by Chris Garlock