Wages
Study – A new study released by the Employment Policies Institute found that 67% of fast-food restaurant owners said the California fast-food minimum wage increase to $20/hr will cost $100,000 per location every year. One in four owners said it would cost more than $200,000 per year. The survey was filled out by 200 business owners across the state. Since April, 89% of restaurant owners said they’ve reduced hours, 73% have limited employee pickup or overtime opportunities, and 70% said they have reduced or consolidated staff positions. Additionally, the owner of fast-casual food chains Tender Greens and Tocaya filed for bankruptcy, citing the new minimum wage, inflation, and the state’s empty office districts as contributing factors. Despite that, newly-released government employment numbers show Southern California had 361,500 fast food workers in June – an all-time staffing high for a sector that employs 4.5% of all Southern California’s workers. More details.
Labor Policy
NLRB – The National Labor Relations Board issued its Fair Choice–Employee Voice Final Rule which returns to the Board’s pre-2020 policy on blocking charges before an election and restoring a Regional Director’s authority to delay an election if unfair labor practice conduct is sufficiently serious to interfere with employee free choice. The rule reverses the Board’s 2020 rule requiring Regional Directors to run elections in an election environment “tainted by unfair labor practices”. It removes the 2020 rule’s requirement that when an employer chooses to voluntarily recognize a union that represents a majority of its workers, the parties provide for a mandatory 45-day period to allow the opportunity for a minority of workers to demand an election questioning that choice. The rule also restores the Board’s 56-year-old voluntary recognition bar, respecting the bargaining relationship that the parties have voluntarily chosen, among other policy changes. More details.
California – The state Supreme Court ruled to uphold a four-year-old ballot measure that classifies Uber and Lyft drivers as independent contractors rather than as employees. In a win for ride-hailing companies, the decision ends a years-long legal dispute that could have reshaped California’s gig economy if the ruling had been overturned. The ballot measure, Proposition 22, was first passed by state voters in 2020. It was overturned in 2021 by a California Superior Court judge, only to be upheld by three appeals court judges last year. The ruling means that Uber and Lyft can continue to operate in the state as usual, and the hundreds of thousands of drivers who work for both services will continue to be classified as independent contractors. More details.
California – Next week, the California Fast Food Council will hold its second meeting since its inception, this time in Sacramento. The initial meeting was held in Oakland in mid-March. Similar to that meeting, the current agenda appears to mainly involve internal governance issues but does allow for public comments and a forum for citizens to suggest issues for further discussion by the council. The council was mandated as part of AB-1228, signed into law by the governor in 2023, establishing a Fast Food Council to establish an hourly minimum wage for fast food restaurant employees and develop standards, rules, and regulations for the fast food industry. More details.
Massachusetts – Legislation is on its way to the governor mandating businesses with 25 or more employees disclose salary ranges when posting a job. The legislation would also protect a worker’s right to ask their employer for the salary range for a position when applying for a job or seeking a promotion. If signed by the governor, the state would become the 11th to mandate pay transparency. Proponents said the bill builds on a 2016 state law which prohibited wage discrimination based on gender. More details.
Key Takeaway
- This week marked the 15th anniversary of the last increase in the federal minimum wage sparking tremendous media coverage. The last increase was July 24, 2009 and at that time, it rose 70 cents from $6.55/hr to its current $7.25/hr. According to the Labor Department, that’s the longest stretch the national minimum wage has gone without an increase since the minimum wage was instituted in 1938. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), roughly 869,000 workers in the U.S. earned the federal minimum wage or less in 2023, more than two-thirds of whom were women. Look for that narrative to continually surface during pending ballot initiative campaigns in Arizona, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
Podcast
Check out our Working Lunch podcast each week that includes further analysis into these legislative issues, policy, politics and much more. You can find Working Lunch on the Restaurant Business online website, SoundCloud, iTunes and Spotify.