Hundreds of thousands of fast-food workers in California would have their wages increased to $20 an hour while a state commission considers improvements in their working conditions under an agreement announced Monday with restaurant owners, who are withdrawing a ballot referendum that would have blocked further-reaching changes.
Labor unions and the restaurant industry negotiated the compromise with assistance from Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last year signed a bill that would have raised the workers’ wages to $22 an hour this year and established a commission with the authority to order better workplace conditions and further wage increases. The restaurant industry quickly collected enough signatures for a referendum that blocked the bill until November 2024, when voters would have decided whether it should take effect.
Under the agreement, minimum wages would rise to $20 in April and could be increased by up to 3.5% a year through 2029 by the nine-member council — made up of four representatives each of workers and the industry, with the ninth chosen by state officials.
Those provisions are in new legislation, AB1228 by Assembly Member Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, which California lawmakers must pass by the Thursday deadline for all bills.
The previous measure would have allowed the council to order improvements in working conditions, but the new bill says it can only recommend improvements to state labor officials. An earlier version of AB1228 would have made a franchise restaurant’s parent company legally responsible for violations by the restaurant, but under the new version, only the local owners will be liable.
“This agreement protects local restaurant owners from significant threats that would have made it difficult to continue to operate in California,” Sean Kennedy, spokesperson for the National Restaurant Association, said in a statement. “It provides a more predictable and stable future for restaurants, workers and consumers.”
But labor organizations celebrated the new wages and protections for restaurant workers and the future withdrawal of next year’s referendum.
“AB1228 clears the path for fast-food workers to start making much-needed improvements to the policies that affect their own workplaces and their lives,” said David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West, which sponsored the bill in its original form and could seek to represent the workers in the future. “It will give voice and structural power to more than half a million fast-food workers in our state; it will also ensure that franchisees have a seat at the table — along with workers, advocates, franchisors and the state.”
“For the last decade, fast-food cooks, cashiers and baristas in California have been sounding the alarm on the poverty pay and unsafe working conditions plaguing our industry,” said Ingrid Vilorio, a fast-food worker and a leader with the organizing group Fight for $15 and a Union.
California’s 30,000-plus fast-food outlets employ more than 557,000 workers, and labor groups say the workers are paid $3 an hour less than comparable service employees in other businesses. Two-thirds of the workers are women and nearly 80% are people of color, labor advocates said.
Nationwide, according to a recent study by researchers at UC Berkeley and the University of Illinois, one-fifth of families with a member holding a fast-food job have incomes below the federal poverty line.
Reach Bob Egelko: begelko@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @BobEgelko
