Staff at McDonald’s, as well as hotel and pub chain JD Wetherspoons and restaurant chain TGI Fridays are staging coordinated strikes next month to highlight the issue of ‘poverty pay’ and ‘insecure working’ in the UK hospitality industry, reports The Independent. Workers in two Wetherspoon’s pubs will walk out on 4 October alongside staff from four McDonald’s chains and three TGI Fridays restaurants. The striking workers said they are fighting for better wages and rights for hospitality workers. The UK’s hospitality sector employs approximately 4.5 million people, or 10% of the UK’s working population, but its workers have not traditionally organised to demand better pay and conditions, making the current strikes significant, despite its small scale. A McDonald’s spokesperson said the company was “disappointed” to hear about the strikes but said the numbers of people involved represented an “extremely small proportion” of its 120,000 workforce. Meanwhile, a JD Wetherspoon spokesperson said that its rates of pay were increasing.