Over the past two years, millions of workers have quit their jobs in search of a a higher salary and better treatment. For the restaurant industry workers who were at the forefront of the big quit, California Governor Gavin Newsom might have a solution that might entice them to stay.
Governor Newsom signed into law the FAST Recovery Act, or FAST Act, on September 5, with the goal of improving wages, training, and health and safety conditions for fast food workers in the state. Coming into effect in January 2023, the FAST Act will establish a 10-member Fast Food Council with the power to set industry-wide employment standards, essentially organizing the 556,000 fast food workers of California under one law.
“The promulgation of [FAST Act] is seen as a huge victory by unions and many non-union fast food workers,” says Belle Hsu, practical labor and employment law editor at Thomson Reuters. “It allows workers to engage in a form of collective bargaining without having to endure union organizing efforts in an industry that has been difficult to organize, due to high turnover and franchise ownership. »
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Notably, the new labor law could raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers up to $22 an hour in the new year. Although between the backlash of the new labor law and currently unknown advice, it may be too early to tell how influential the FAST Act will be.
“The likelihood of raising the minimum wage to more than $20 in 2023 is unclear,” Hsu says. “It is difficult at this time to predict what the Fast Food Council, once established, will do, especially given the challenges already posed to this law.”
The law has already met with immediate opposition, including from the Save Local Restaurants coalition, which is seeking to suspend the FAST law until the next statewide election in November 2024, Hsu says. The coalition argued that the new law would raise food prices in California, hurt small businesses and stifle job growth in the wake of rising wages and bureaucratic standards.
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“The new law targets the fast-food industry, which the coalition says already has strong worker protection rules and would allow a small, unelected committee to override those rules,” Hsu said. “The coalition believes the greatest harm will be done to low-income and communities of color, including thousands of small family-owned, minority-owned and women-owned businesses.”
The FAST Act, along with the council’s influence, only applies to California fast food restaurants with 100 or more locations nationwide. Despite the backlash, the law has the potential to help more than half a million California restaurant workers move closer to earning a living wage (which sits at $21.82 an hour for an adult living in California, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator).
Although the unelected committee has yet to be formed, efforts are being made to staff it with representatives from across the fast food industry: the Fast Food Council will be comprised of two fast food franchisors , two franchisees, two restaurant employees, two fast food employee advocates, a representative from the Department of Industrial Relations and a representative from the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. As Hsu notes, the composition of the board does not guarantee an increase in the minimum wage.
Either way, Hsu predicts that if the FAST law goes into effect, it could set a nationwide precedent.
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“[The FAST Act] serves as a model for the creation of an unelected council to set industry-wide employment standards for other industries, such as retail, home health care and nail salons,” she says.[It can also be a model] for similar bills in states where Democrats control the legislature and the governor is also a Democrat, such as New York. »
As the restaurant industry has borne the brunt of the health and safety risks that come with the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside historically low wages, Hsu expects political attention to continue. more focused on these essential workers.
“The pandemic has hit fast food workers hard, both financially and medically,” Hsu says. “By signing this bill, Governor Newsom is agreeing with the state legislature that existing enforcement and regulatory mechanisms have been ineffective in ensuring the health, safety and well-being of fast food workers. .”
