California fast food minimum wage law ices out whole businesses

Opinion

editorial

By Post Editorial Board

California’s fast food minimum wage law is icing out whole businesses, not just jobs, in Week One.

SoCal soft-serve icon Fosters Freeze has shut down its Lemoore, Calif., operations, all because of the new requirement that fast food workers be paid $20 an hour. 

The workers got the bad news from management when they showed up for their a.m. shift.

Gives a whole, ugly new meaning to the phrase “hiring freeze.” 

Again: Everyone capable of grade-school arithmetic saw this coming. 

Jack up the cost of a good — labor, in this case — and businesses have to use less of it or pass the cost on to customers. Or, like the Lemoore Fosters Freeze, succumb to the big chill. 

Note that in his quest to drive Cali’s economy to absolute zero, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s made a few important exceptions. 

One is Panera Bread, the beneficiary of a bizarre bakery-based carve-out in the law cooked up special for Gavin’s biz buddy and campaign donor Greg Flynn (who owns a lot of Paneras).

Another is a restaurant Newsom himself founded, PlumpJack Cafe in tony Olympic Valley near Lake Tahoe. 

PlumpJack’s offering a skinny $16 for a table busser gig. 

Now, since PlumpJack doesn’t meet the scale requirements of the fast food law (which hits businesses with 60 or more franchises nationwide), this ain’t illegal. 

But it stinks like last week’s sea bream.  

You’d think Golden Arches Gavin would want that same high wage for workers at a place he started (especially since they have to live and work in a gilded resort community). 

It’s a matter of justice, after all. 

Yes, he no longer runs it, but his sister is co-prez of the corporate group that owns the joint. 

And we’re pretty sure he can ping her on the family group text about pay hikes if the mood strikes him. 

That it hasn’t yet proves Newsom (who, it must be stressed, is no dummy) gets exactly how dumb and dangerous to workers and owners sky-high wage laws are.