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TThe next President of the United States could be a former McDonald’s employee.

More than 13 percent of Americans, or about 41 million people, have worked in a McDonald’s restaurant at some point in their lives. This includes Kamala Harris, who worked in a restaurant for a summer while she was in college.

Harris mentioned her brief stint in the fryer when she joined the picket line with fast-food workers in Las Vegas in 2019 and during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show in April. (Her order? Quarter Pounder with cheese and fries and barbecue sauce for dipping if she takes McNuggets.)

Now the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign is pointing to her summer job to highlight her upbringing and launch a program to empower American workers that stands in stark contrast to her Republican rival Donald Trump, who, according to a recent ad, has “no plan to help the middle class — just more tax cuts for billionaires.”

McDonald’s appears on the resumes of influential Americans everywhere (former House Speaker Paul Ryan and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have also worked at McDonald’s restaurants), but service workers’ unions and fast-food workers are leading nationwide efforts to improve working conditions for low-wage workers, including calls to raise the federal minimum wage to at least $15 an hour.

They may soon find an influential advocate in one of their former colleagues.

Harris – who is backed by several influential unions, including the Service Employees International Union, which has sponsored the nationwide Fight for $15 campaign – stood alongside striking McDonald’s workers and protesters at the launch of her first presidential campaign.

“If we want to talk about these golden arches being a symbol of the best of America, they don’t measure up,” she said from Las Vegas in June 2019. “We have to recognize that working people deserve a living wage.”

“I made the fries and the ice cream,” she told the workers.

“There was no family that depended on me to pay the rent, put food on the table and pay the bills to the end of the month,” she added. “But the reality at McDonald’s is that the majority of people who work there today depend on that income to support a household and a family.”

Fast-food jobs are often dismissed as temporary jobs for teenagers looking for summer work, reflecting the “bootstraps” mentality of Republicans that often overlooks the more than three million fast-food workers in the U.S. In 2022, the typical fast-food worker was a 26-year-old woman making just over $13 an hour, according to federal labor market data.

McDonald’s corporate-owned restaurants increased their hourly wages to $17 in 2021, even though about 95 percent of the company’s 14,000 restaurants are independent and have different pay rates. The company has said it recognizes workers’ right to join a union.

When President Joe Biden selected her as his running mate in 2020, Harris reiterated her support for raising the federal hourly minimum wage to $15. That’s nearly double the current minimum wage of $7.25, which hasn’t been raised since 2009.

“Raising the minimum wage is about the floor, not the ceiling,” she said during a virtual rally with fast-food workers and Senator Bernie Sanders in October 2020.

In most states, the minimum wage has been raised above the federal minimum wage, but in 20 other states it remains at $7.25 an hour.

Georgia and Wyoming have set their minimum rate at just $5.15, which is below the federal rate that applies instead.

Raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour would lift nearly a million people out of poverty and increase the incomes of more than 30 million Americans, according to the nonpartisan Federal Budget Office.

Congress failed in 2021 to pass a vote on a minimum wage increase as part of a larger Covid-19 relief package. The vice president, who serves as presiding officer of the Senate, was under pressure from a group of congressional Democrats at the time to ignore the non-binding recommendation that the measure could be signed into law.

Fast-food workers in California won a major victory earlier this year when they raised the hourly minimum wage to $20. The state also has the first union for fast-food workers, the Service Employees International Union, which now has a seat at the bargaining table after more than a decade of labor disputes and strikes in 450 restaurants.

The wage-raising bill, which has stalled in Congress, would gradually increase the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour by 2029. The subminimum wage for tipped workers – set at $2.13 an hour – would be effectively eliminated by 2030.

During her tenure as senator, Harris co-sponsored a version of this bill.

Nearly 30 percent of workers in the United States, or about 44 million people, earn less than $17 an hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

The “real” value of the nationwide minimum wage has gradually declined, reaching a 66-year low in 2023. Its purchasing power is 42 percent lower than at its peak in 1968, according to the think tank. “This significant loss of purchasing power means that the nationwide minimum wage today is nowhere near a living wage,” a 2023 report said.

A “real” minimum wage – if it kept pace with inflation and productivity growth – would be $23 an hour today, estimates the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

“Vice President Harris is the daughter of a working mother and worked at McDonald’s to pay for college,” said campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt in a statement.

“She knows what middle-class families go through,” she added. “Donald Trump, on the other hand, is running to give more handouts to his super-rich friends at the expense of working Americans. That’s the contrast voters will see between now and Election Day.”