Mental health workers go on hunger strike, demanding better pay and benefits.

text.npr.org Mental health workers go on hunger strike, demanding better pay and benefits

In many ways, it was the usual protest scene. Dozens of striking mental health care workers chanted and marched Tuesday outside a Kaiser Permanente medical center on a busy strip of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Passing cars honked in support. People vigorously waved homemade signs.
But a few of the striking workers sat quietly under a tent, conserving their energy and mixing electrolyte drinks – their only planned sustenance for five days.

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It’s hard work in a different way, you get all kinds of violence and verbal abuse. Get assaulted bad and you might never come back to work. Hazard pay territory for sure. Kaiser should pay up.

Five days ain’t shit for a hunger strike. I’ve done a seven day fast for the hell of it. If they want to be taken seriously it can’t have a planned end.

Maybe I misunderstand the point of hunger strikes, but isn't it really only effective when your sustenance is being provided by someone else (and they're in charge of your safety, which includes making sure you eat)?
The entire point is that someone else is in charge of their well-being, yet they are purposely choosing to make that person's job impossible by refusing to eat. Which is why it's almost always done by prisoners.
Like why would someone driving by care that the people holding the signs and protesting on the side of the road were hungry or not?
I don't know, maybe I'm missing something here?
- I think you actually nailed the point perfectly. Part of the social contract is that an employer will provide enough money to meet the basic needs of the employees. When the employer fails to do that, employees can feel like "wage slaves", or prisoners, who are being mistreated.
  "We've had to limit our food anyway," said Valdivia. "So basically you are kind of starving us, Kaiser."