Wages
Nebraska – Nearly 300 Nebraska business owners and executives across the state, including dozens of restaurant and tavern owners have gone on record in support of ballot Initiative 433, which would raise Nebraska’s minimum wage to $15/hr by 2026 and then tie the wage to inflation thereafter. Chances for passage are unclear. More details.
New York City – Delivery drivers for Grubhub and DoorDash held a rally calling for a minimum wage of $30/hr for drivers in the sector. The city has been paying particular attention to this class of employees recently passing numerous restrictions in the past few years regulating the platforms. While the mayor’s office did not comment directly on the issue, they reiterated their commitment to raising wages and benefits for delivery drivers. More details.
Paid Leave
U.S. House – The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis released a report this week on corporate paid leave policies. It found that employees at some of the country’s biggest companies who lacked sick pay or family leave quit at significantly higher rates than other workers during the pandemic. The report was based on internal data from 12 major companies including AT&T, Berkshire Hathaway, Boeing, Chevron, Cisco, Citigroup, Comcast, ExxonMobil, Oracle, Salesforce, Walmart, and The Walt Disney Co. Most of the companies that the committee surveyed said they provided paid sick leave to all workers. However, a quarter of those companies did not. The report found that workers without paid sick leave quit at a rate three to four times the rate of comparable workers from 2019 to 2021. More details.
Oregon – The state is set to start collecting contributions from businesses and employees for the new state paid family and medical leave program. Contributions are scheduled to start Jan. 1. With benefits scheduled to be paid starting Sept. 3, 2023. Benefits under the program are set at a maximum of $1,215/wk for 12 weeks during a single year. The contributions go into a trust fund for benefits and the initial contributions for 2023 are capped at 1% of wages. For employees, their share is six-tenths, or 60%; for employers of 25 or more, their share is four-tenths, or 40%. Smaller employers are not required to contribute, though their employees will have to. More details.
Labor Policy
Labor Department – The agency delayed by 15 days the public comment period for their proposed rule on independent contractors. The new rule broadly parallels the model adopted by the Obama Administration that was later scuttled by the Trump Administration. The proposal includes an “economic realities test” which allows the agency to take into account a wide array of factors such as employer control and workers’ own investments in equipment when determining employee status. It also directs the agency to analyze the “totality-of-the-circumstances” for a given worker, rather than look for discreet criteria in making determinations regarding employment status. It does not include a so-called ABC test, the three-prong blueprint that employers must meet if they want to classify a worker as an independent contractor that Labor Department officials have repeatedly said they do not have authority to implement without congressional authorization. The proposal will be subject to a public comment period before it can be finalized and is expected to face heated opposition from employer groups. Comments were originally due by Nov. 28. The comment period has been extended to Dec.13. More details.
New York City – Next week, the city’s sweeping pay transparency law will go into effect. As of Nov. 1, companies will be required to include salary ranges for job postings, both those shared on public sites and on internal bulletin boards, and even for those jobs that offer a hybrid schedule or can be performed fully remote. The rules will apply to almost all companies except for the smallest firms. Any business with at least four workers, assuming at least one of them is based in the city, must include the lowest and highest salaries for any job it posts. The law was passed nearly a year ago by the City Council during the last days of the administration of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio. Extensive criticism from the business community led the city to delay the start date to November from May and to make some tweaks, including removing the fine for a first-time offense; subsequent offenses, however, can cost up to $250,000. The new law will be enforced by the city’s Commission on Human Rights. More details.
California – The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the labor union responsible for the introduction and passage of the FAST Act, has filed a complaint with both the secretary of state and the attorney general’s office, accusing the industry-backed Save Local Restaurants coalition and their allies of lying to residents when soliciting signatures for a petition to let voters decide in 2024 if the Fast Act should take effect. According to the union, professional signature-gatherers hired by the coalition are telling potential signers that the petition requires the state to raise fast-food workers’ wages and essentially hoodwinking minimum wage increase supporters into signing the petitions. They are asking state officials to suspend the campaign. It is unclear whether those state offices will intervene. More details.
Labor Activism
Amazon – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against Amazon CEO Andy Jassy alleging he violated labor law in two interviews he gave this year where he discussed his stance on unions at the company. Jassy’s comments were made after workers at the JFK8 Staten Island location voted to organize in April with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU). This year, the NLRB has repeatedly found Amazon to have violated workers’ rights during a handful of unionization campaigns. The first interview cited by the NLRB took place April 14. In that episode, the NLRB asserts that Jassy said that employees who were represented by a union would be less empowered in the workplace, making it more difficult for them to have direct relationships with management and making things “much slower” and “much more bureaucratic.” In the second interview, he allegedly stated that employees were better off without a union. The company will now have the opportunity to settle with the ALU or take the case before an administrative law judge. The NLRB is requesting that Amazon mail and email workers a notice about their labor rights. More details.
Amazon – Workers at a Moreno Valley, California facility withdrew their petition to the National Labor Relations Board to conduct a unionization election just days after the labor group overwhelmingly failed to win enough votes to unionize an Amazon facility in upstate New York. Since the seminal victory by the union at the JFK8 in Staten Island earlier this year, the ALU hasn’t seen success with organizing efforts at other Amazon facilities. In addition to the Amazon workers near Albany voting against joining the union last week, the ALU recently failed to win enough votes to unionize a smaller Amazon outpost, also in Staten Island. Additionally, the company has refused to recognize or meet with the union at JFK8— and continues to challenge the union’s election win, potentially diminishing the enthusiasm for unionization among some workers. More details.
Starbucks – Representatives of Starbucks walked out of five collective bargaining sessions with union members, citing union members refusal to follow bargaining guidelines. Starbucks workers in Buffalo, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Louisville, and Lakewood, California (all of whom won their union elections earlier this year) were set to meet with the company this week to begin negotiating contracts. Some union members joined by Zoom. Starbucks’ representatives abruptly left and later said they wouldn’t return. At the root of the disagreement is who should be allowed to participate in the sessions, how they can join, and if the sessions can be taped. The move is being widely panned as a delaying tactic. More details.
Sustainability
SEC – During a meeting with the business community this week, staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicated their intent to delay a final climate rule until early 2023 instead of this fall. The proposed rule would require publicly-traded companies to submit detailed disclosure about the financial impact of climate change on their business – including power sources for the company’s operations (electricity and fuel) and carbon emissions from the company’s footprint (supply chains and beyond). Importantly, that data will need to be verified in their audited financial statements. It was likely to be finalized as soon as this week and require that by Jan. 1, 2023, businesses will have to begin collecting that data for the initial submission date of Jan. 1, 2024. The delay was due to the overwhelming pushback from the business community and even numerous Democratic senators and means that initial data collection might not take place until late next summer or early fall. More details.
Misc.
Macaroni Grill – A lawsuit was filed against a unit in Honolulu claiming an additional $2.00 inflation fee added to restaurant tabs was “deceptive” to consumers. The restaurant has been adding the fee since the Spring but due to litigation and consumer backlash, it has now been removed. The litigation will continue. More details.
Key Takeaways
- New attention was paid this week to an emerging issue that could potentially impact restaurant operations as well as present reputational challenges for the industry. The Hill, a daily newspaper on Capitol Hill read by all members of Congress and their staffs as well as the DC lobbying community, ran an extensive article outlining the efforts in a growing number of cities and states to ban natural gas. The environmental community sees natural gas production and its usage as a seminal threat to the environment and public health and the restaurant industry has emerged as the leading “face” of the issue – in fact the National Restaurant Association and the California Restaurant Association are referenced in the article. Brands need to prepare accordingly for this emerging dialogue.
Podcast
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