Fast food workers strike in downtown Chicago to advocate for better living wages, April 24th 2013. #photojournalism #weareworthmore (Photo credit: Chris Dilts)

By Seth Freed Wessler

Olivia Roffle has worked at Papa John’s Pizza in St. Louis, Mo., for three years and she hates it. “It’s just not an enjoyable place to work,” she says. The 23 year old, who is enrolled in classes to become a social worker, doesn’t make enough to pay rent at her own place so she alternates nights at her mother’s, uncle’s and sister’s homes. That was a lousy situation, and then it got worse when her car broke and she didn’t have the money to fix it. So she ends up taking two busses and a train to make it to her shifts. But here’s the thing: Roffle does work enough hours to afford to fix her car. That’s to say, if she were paid for all the hours she works, she’d have a ride. She’s not, she says, because her employer thieves her wages.

If that sounds dramatic, it should. Roffle is one of hundreds of fast food workers in six U.S. cities who in recent months have gone on strike to demand higher wages—$15 an hour, more than twice what she makes now— and the right to unionize. But as much as she and other workers want a living wage, they also want to get paid a legal wage.

“Its kind of like understood, it’s a thing there, it’s an unspoken thing,” Roffle told me about illegal employment practices that shirk workers of wages to which they’re legally and contractually entitled. Roffle is among those now trying to organizer fast food workers in Missouri. “There would be a ton of people making overtime if we got paid for all the hours we work, but we don’t.”

Read More How Fast Food Companies Steal Workers’ Pay – COLORLINES.