5 ms·

California fast-food workers will get $20 minimum wage, starting Monday

34 points by geox 3y ago

bike 3y ago
I'm curious to see how this plays out. It seems like there are a lot of lower paying jobs available and that stores are understaffed. I've also heard that the people working those types of jobs are having trouble getting enough hours. As someone who isn't very keyed in to this its hard to tell what's going on. Either way, its got to be hard to live in California on $20/hr.
- CSSer 3y ago
  They don’t get enough hours because the employers don’t want to be responsible for their healthcare. It’s cheaper to keep someone below 30/hr week than it is to let them go above that and quality for full-time benefits.
  - quartesixte 3y ago
    >because the employers don’t want to be responsible for their healthcare. An argument for some kind of baseline, nationalized health insurance. Removes that burden from Employers and they can then turn to the far cheaper option of employing them for an extra 10 - 20 hours a week + raises. Employers can use insurance benefits as hiring incentives, further creating better competition in the market for employees.
hbogert 3y ago
Won't this just spur inflation?
- throwaway5959 3y ago
  No. But this will provide more data that it won’t.
  - missedthecue 3y ago
    Does this imply that the difference will be coming out of the franchisee's pocket then? No one else is impacted?
    - throwaway5959 3y ago
      They’ll probably raise prices or absorb the costs, but it’s not a big enough cost to move the needle on inflation. These people make peanuts, and will even after the raise.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    In the big cities at least, $20 is already the floor on most fast food jobs. This will have the most impact in poorer cities and more rural towns. It should spur more productivity via automation (like more kiosks and robots being used in fast food).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- hakdbha 3y ago
  [dead]
- exabrial 3y ago
  In the most pedantic sense no. Inflation can technically only be created by increasing the money supply artificially. However this has a similar effect venue it applies unneeded artificial pressure to a free market. This is also happens to be easy way to buy votes, using none of your own money, and has been a tried and true political play for many decades.
  - everybodyknows 3y ago
    > In the most pedantic sense no. True, it should be modeled as an input commodity adverse price shock -- as if the prices of some other essential, say wheat or potatoes had jumped by 30% -- though only for restaurants that fit the criteria.
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    > This is also happens to be easy way to buy votes People's brains have become so poisoned about institutions that government actually helping people seems suspicious instead of its purpose.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > In the most pedantic sense no. Inflation can technically only be created by increasing the money supply artificially. This is the definition of “monetary inflation” rather than the more common “consumer price inflation” that everyone who isn’t a particular kind of crank means when they use “inflation” unmodified in general use (rather than internally in a very specific academic/research community.) > However this has a similar effect venue it applies unneeded artificial pressure to a free market. “Free markets” do not, and cannot, exist in the real world; they are not merely an idealized concept, but actually one that requires assuming contradictory things. > This is also happens to be easy way to buy votes, using none of your own money, and has been a tried and true political play for many decades. The long series of advocacy from multiple sides, early legislation, referenda against that legislation, and labor, industry, and government negotiations to reach a mutually tolerable resolution that resulted in this law can be described as many things, but “an easy way” to do anything is not one of them. (The initial minimum wage increase is a tiny part of the law, whose main function is setting up a new industry regulatory authority with labor, franchisee/restaurant owner, and franchisor/chain owner representation, with general statewide regulatory authority over industry working conditions in the state.)
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  Probably not. It will likely result in a cut in hours for marginal workers, boosted hours for higher productivity workers and more outsourcing/automation. Labor intensive restaurant operations will have a competitive disadvantage to capital intensive models, and so we’ll see more capital intensive ones thrive.
  - everybodyknows 3y ago
    We'll also see more performance pressure from managers of the affected workers, and more wage theft, e.g. pressure to put in time "off the clock".
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      The minimum wage is just the first impact of a law establishing a new state regulatory body with labor, industry, and public representation for regulating working conditions in the industry; wage theft in the industry was one of the motivating factors.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  The minimum wage in California is already $16, so this is only a 25% increase for this subset of an industry. This is equivalent to increasing the minimum wage to $9 in other states.
pjkundert 3y ago
/Remaining/ California fast-food workers will get $20 minimum wage, starting Monday. The "minimum wage" is, and remains: $0
- throwaway5959 3y ago
  Yes we know, you can gleefully brag about the mass layoffs of fast food workers soon. Please post here when it happens.
  - Gibbon1 3y ago
    One silver lining about the pandemic is the cat is out of the bag how robust the economy is despite what MBA's, economists, and rentier billionaires would have you think. And political leaders are now well aware of the bill of goods they were sold by those knuckleheads.
    - delfinom 3y ago
      Can we blame the welfare queens from starting to drum up support for more taxpayer funded bailouts in anticipation of a recession?
      - phone8675309 3y ago
        > welfare queens Please define this term for me, thanks
        Gibbon1 3y ago
        The term welfare queen is a term that originally was used by conservatives to oppose federal social programs. The term describes a supposed well off black urban single mother living off benefits. Fact, most recipients of welfare are white rural poor. More recently people use the term to describe the over class living a life backstopped by the government.
        3y ago
nitwit005 3y ago
Not opposed to raising minimum wage, but this law seems oddly specific, and has fairly goofy exemptions. We're going to see the usual side effect of businesses changing their behavior to become exempt. They have a FAQ explaining the rules here: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Fast-Food-Minimum-Wage-FAQ.htm https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Fast-Food-Minimum-Wage-FAQ.htm
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  > goofy exemptions You may be thinking of this: > Restaurants that operate a bakery that "produces" and sells "bread" as a stand-alone menu item as of September 15, 2023, and continue to do so are exempt from the new law. Not "goofy" at all, perfectly rational -- once one learns that Panera is a contributor to Governer Newsom's political campaigns.
  - robotburrito 3y ago
    Goofy question, but what stops any restaurant in CA from just running out and buying a $200 bread machine?
    - kyboren 3y ago
      The law[0] stipulates in §1474(c)(2) that '"fast food restaurant" shall not include an establishment that on September 15, 2023, operates a bakery that produces for sale on the establishment’s premises bread [...]'. So in order to get the exemption you would need to get a time machine in addition to the $200 bread machine. [0]: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1228/id/2843232 https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1228/id/2843232
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      (1) Individual independent restaurants aren’t effected by this, it applies to large fast food chains.(“large chains” is embedded in how the bill defines “fast food”, even though its not part of the usual definition of the term.) (2) They’d have to go back in time to do it (even if they did when the governor signed the bill), since the cut-off date was in the past when the bill was signed. If they were really pro-active, I guess a chain could have bought bread machines and changed its menu in the four days between the final bill text being presented in the committee and the cut-off date, but my guess is none did. (3) The main thing this bill does is create a uniform state wide regulatory body for fast food (large chain) working conditions including any potential higher-than-general minimum wage, exempting them potential local regulations doing similar things, possibly inconsistently, throughout the state. Wiggling out of the coverage of this bill would wiggle them back into that kind of potential multi-jurisdiction regulation issue; the $20 minimum wage is an initial wage boost for the industry included in the bill before the council is up and running, but not the main focus.
zug_zug 3y ago
> Several fast-food executives have suggested prices would go up 2.5% to 3.5% to offset higher wages; Jack in the Box, Starbucks, McDonald's and Chipotle have all warned of upcoming price hikes. So I guess a frapuccino would go from $4 to $4.12.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  I can't speak to coffee but fast food has already gone up in price sharply relative to higher tiers of food. There's no room to raise prices further without a lot more people noticing that it's absurd to get a combo from McDonald's or Taco Bell now that the contract (worse food but cheaper) has been broken.
timmg 3y ago
Does anyone understand the rationale for only applying this to fast food workers?
- bdcravens 3y ago
  Perhaps demographics of fast food hires versus other restaurants or industries? Perhaps push-back from restaurants that rely on tips?
- anjel 3y ago
  Something to do with sub-living wage corporate subsidies?
  - gruez 3y ago
    That doesn't apply to any other types of workers?
- kyboren 3y ago
  "Loser, loner, McDonald's--worker". Fast food work has long been denigrated as a low-pay dirty job predominantly staffed by teenagers and under-skilled under-privileged workers who lack better job opportunities. In the California zeitgeist this makes pro-fast food worker action politically irresistible. This is actually a compromise agreement reached after an earlier bill[0] was passed and fast food franchisees threatened to run a ballot proposition to get it repealed. Basically, politics is how we determine who gets what part of the pie. Fast food workers are sympathetic and politically powerful right now. They simply have more political power than other minimum wage workers and they are now cashing in on that political power. [0]: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB257/id/2605912 https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB257/id/2605912
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  The short version is “Large fast-food chains” – (the definition in the law restricts this to large chains) – “are plagued by a bunch of common pervasive issues, including wage and hour violations, and are structured in a way that is an effective hack around the normal method of accountability for violations, so industry-wide regulation of wages, working conditions, etc., with representation of the industry, franchisees, workers, and worker advocates, and the non-industry-affiliated public has been deemed necessary, with an initial industry-specific boost in minimum wages attached to that.” The longer answer is…well, research the history of the California FAST Act, which this updates/replaces, and AB 1228/2023 (the law here), and the negotiations by which the industry referendum against the former was withdrawn in exchange for the rewrite of the latter that was then adopted.
pizzafeelsright 3y ago
I don't understand why it isn't $1,000 an hour. $20 won't get very far today.
- xeornet 3y ago
  So upskill and get a better job? $1,000 to flip burgers? Ain’t no ROI - you’ll be replaced by a robot even quicker.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  It's probably at least $1,000/hour in original 1792 dollars.
- vivzkestrel 3y ago
  my dear guy, you really need to spend some time this year and learn economics and i dont say this in a vile or mocking way but you will understand why a burger flipper cannot making 1000$ per hour unless everyone else is making 2000$ per hour after you finish an economics course
  - pizzafeelsright 3y ago
    I would think politicians would need to understand economics considering they are making policy. Effectively, it is illegal for two consenting adults to agree to $19/hour in exchange for work. They can have sex, drink beer, smoke weed, and make a baby but determining between the two of them a value less than a Andrew Jackson is a crime. Does that seem right to you?
    - vivzkestrel 3y ago
      its not about what seems right, it is about what eventually turns out to be right, this is why you need to learn economics
nodesocket 3y ago
Expect fast food companies to just pass this onto consumers or leave California. California legislators should be required to read an economics book or at least consult with business leaders. Oppressed vs oppressor mentality, and buying of dem votes.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  Fast food restaurants are as likely to leave California as these workers are to move the low cost of living state like Mississippi.

34 points by geox 3y ago

bike 3y ago

I'm curious to see how this plays out. It seems like there are a lot of lower paying jobs available and that stores are understaffed. I've also heard that the people working those types of jobs are having trouble getting enough hours. As someone who isn't very keyed in to this its hard to tell what's going on. Either way, its got to be hard to live in California on $20/hr.

CSSer 3y ago
They don’t get enough hours because the employers don’t want to be responsible for their healthcare. It’s cheaper to keep someone below 30/hr week than it is to let them go above that and quality for full-time benefits.
- quartesixte 3y ago
  >because the employers don’t want to be responsible for their healthcare. An argument for some kind of baseline, nationalized health insurance. Removes that burden from Employers and they can then turn to the far cheaper option of employing them for an extra 10 - 20 hours a week + raises. Employers can use insurance benefits as hiring incentives, further creating better competition in the market for employees.

hbogert 3y ago

Won't this just spur inflation?

throwaway5959 3y ago
No. But this will provide more data that it won’t.
- missedthecue 3y ago
  Does this imply that the difference will be coming out of the franchisee's pocket then? No one else is impacted?
  - throwaway5959 3y ago
    They’ll probably raise prices or absorb the costs, but it’s not a big enough cost to move the needle on inflation. These people make peanuts, and will even after the raise.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  In the big cities at least, $20 is already the floor on most fast food jobs. This will have the most impact in poorer cities and more rural towns. It should spur more productivity via automation (like more kiosks and robots being used in fast food).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
hakdbha 3y ago
[dead]
exabrial 3y ago
In the most pedantic sense no. Inflation can technically only be created by increasing the money supply artificially. However this has a similar effect venue it applies unneeded artificial pressure to a free market. This is also happens to be easy way to buy votes, using none of your own money, and has been a tried and true political play for many decades.
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  > In the most pedantic sense no. True, it should be modeled as an input commodity adverse price shock -- as if the prices of some other essential, say wheat or potatoes had jumped by 30% -- though only for restaurants that fit the criteria.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  > This is also happens to be easy way to buy votes People's brains have become so poisoned about institutions that government actually helping people seems suspicious instead of its purpose.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > In the most pedantic sense no. Inflation can technically only be created by increasing the money supply artificially. This is the definition of “monetary inflation” rather than the more common “consumer price inflation” that everyone who isn’t a particular kind of crank means when they use “inflation” unmodified in general use (rather than internally in a very specific academic/research community.) > However this has a similar effect venue it applies unneeded artificial pressure to a free market. “Free markets” do not, and cannot, exist in the real world; they are not merely an idealized concept, but actually one that requires assuming contradictory things. > This is also happens to be easy way to buy votes, using none of your own money, and has been a tried and true political play for many decades. The long series of advocacy from multiple sides, early legislation, referenda against that legislation, and labor, industry, and government negotiations to reach a mutually tolerable resolution that resulted in this law can be described as many things, but “an easy way” to do anything is not one of them. (The initial minimum wage increase is a tiny part of the law, whose main function is setting up a new industry regulatory authority with labor, franchisee/restaurant owner, and franchisor/chain owner representation, with general statewide regulatory authority over industry working conditions in the state.)
anonuser123456 3y ago
Probably not. It will likely result in a cut in hours for marginal workers, boosted hours for higher productivity workers and more outsourcing/automation. Labor intensive restaurant operations will have a competitive disadvantage to capital intensive models, and so we’ll see more capital intensive ones thrive.
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  We'll also see more performance pressure from managers of the affected workers, and more wage theft, e.g. pressure to put in time "off the clock".
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    The minimum wage is just the first impact of a law establishing a new state regulatory body with labor, industry, and public representation for regulating working conditions in the industry; wage theft in the industry was one of the motivating factors.
bdcravens 3y ago
The minimum wage in California is already $16, so this is only a 25% increase for this subset of an industry. This is equivalent to increasing the minimum wage to $9 in other states.

pjkundert 3y ago

/Remaining/ California fast-food workers will get $20 minimum wage, starting Monday. The "minimum wage" is, and remains: $0

throwaway5959 3y ago
Yes we know, you can gleefully brag about the mass layoffs of fast food workers soon. Please post here when it happens.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  One silver lining about the pandemic is the cat is out of the bag how robust the economy is despite what MBA's, economists, and rentier billionaires would have you think. And political leaders are now well aware of the bill of goods they were sold by those knuckleheads.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Can we blame the welfare queens from starting to drum up support for more taxpayer funded bailouts in anticipation of a recession?
    - phone8675309 3y ago
      > welfare queens Please define this term for me, thanks
      - Gibbon1 3y ago
        The term welfare queen is a term that originally was used by conservatives to oppose federal social programs. The term describes a supposed well off black urban single mother living off benefits. Fact, most recipients of welfare are white rural poor. More recently people use the term to describe the over class living a life backstopped by the government.
        3y ago

nitwit005 3y ago

Not opposed to raising minimum wage, but this law seems oddly specific, and has fairly goofy exemptions. We're going to see the usual side effect of businesses changing their behavior to become exempt. They have a FAQ explaining the rules here: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Fast-Food-Minimum-Wage-FAQ.htm https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Fast-Food-Minimum-Wage-FAQ.htm

everybodyknows 3y ago
> goofy exemptions You may be thinking of this: > Restaurants that operate a bakery that "produces" and sells "bread" as a stand-alone menu item as of September 15, 2023, and continue to do so are exempt from the new law. Not "goofy" at all, perfectly rational -- once one learns that Panera is a contributor to Governer Newsom's political campaigns.
- robotburrito 3y ago
  Goofy question, but what stops any restaurant in CA from just running out and buying a $200 bread machine?
  - kyboren 3y ago
    The law[0] stipulates in §1474(c)(2) that '"fast food restaurant" shall not include an establishment that on September 15, 2023, operates a bakery that produces for sale on the establishment’s premises bread [...]'. So in order to get the exemption you would need to get a time machine in addition to the $200 bread machine. [0]: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1228/id/2843232 https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1228/id/2843232
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    (1) Individual independent restaurants aren’t effected by this, it applies to large fast food chains.(“large chains” is embedded in how the bill defines “fast food”, even though its not part of the usual definition of the term.) (2) They’d have to go back in time to do it (even if they did when the governor signed the bill), since the cut-off date was in the past when the bill was signed. If they were really pro-active, I guess a chain could have bought bread machines and changed its menu in the four days between the final bill text being presented in the committee and the cut-off date, but my guess is none did. (3) The main thing this bill does is create a uniform state wide regulatory body for fast food (large chain) working conditions including any potential higher-than-general minimum wage, exempting them potential local regulations doing similar things, possibly inconsistently, throughout the state. Wiggling out of the coverage of this bill would wiggle them back into that kind of potential multi-jurisdiction regulation issue; the $20 minimum wage is an initial wage boost for the industry included in the bill before the council is up and running, but not the main focus.

zug_zug 3y ago

> Several fast-food executives have suggested prices would go up 2.5% to 3.5% to offset higher wages; Jack in the Box, Starbucks, McDonald's and Chipotle have all warned of upcoming price hikes. So I guess a frapuccino would go from $4 to $4.12.

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
I can't speak to coffee but fast food has already gone up in price sharply relative to higher tiers of food. There's no room to raise prices further without a lot more people noticing that it's absurd to get a combo from McDonald's or Taco Bell now that the contract (worse food but cheaper) has been broken.

timmg 3y ago

Does anyone understand the rationale for only applying this to fast food workers?

bdcravens 3y ago
Perhaps demographics of fast food hires versus other restaurants or industries? Perhaps push-back from restaurants that rely on tips?
anjel 3y ago
Something to do with sub-living wage corporate subsidies?
- gruez 3y ago
  That doesn't apply to any other types of workers?
kyboren 3y ago
"Loser, loner, McDonald's--worker". Fast food work has long been denigrated as a low-pay dirty job predominantly staffed by teenagers and under-skilled under-privileged workers who lack better job opportunities. In the California zeitgeist this makes pro-fast food worker action politically irresistible. This is actually a compromise agreement reached after an earlier bill[0] was passed and fast food franchisees threatened to run a ballot proposition to get it repealed. Basically, politics is how we determine who gets what part of the pie. Fast food workers are sympathetic and politically powerful right now. They simply have more political power than other minimum wage workers and they are now cashing in on that political power. [0]: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB257/id/2605912 https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB257/id/2605912
dragonwriter 3y ago
The short version is “Large fast-food chains” – (the definition in the law restricts this to large chains) – “are plagued by a bunch of common pervasive issues, including wage and hour violations, and are structured in a way that is an effective hack around the normal method of accountability for violations, so industry-wide regulation of wages, working conditions, etc., with representation of the industry, franchisees, workers, and worker advocates, and the non-industry-affiliated public has been deemed necessary, with an initial industry-specific boost in minimum wages attached to that.” The longer answer is…well, research the history of the California FAST Act, which this updates/replaces, and AB 1228/2023 (the law here), and the negotiations by which the industry referendum against the former was withdrawn in exchange for the rewrite of the latter that was then adopted.

pizzafeelsright 3y ago

I don't understand why it isn't $1,000 an hour. $20 won't get very far today.

xeornet 3y ago
So upskill and get a better job? $1,000 to flip burgers? Ain’t no ROI - you’ll be replaced by a robot even quicker.
phendrenad2 3y ago
It's probably at least $1,000/hour in original 1792 dollars.
vivzkestrel 3y ago
my dear guy, you really need to spend some time this year and learn economics and i dont say this in a vile or mocking way but you will understand why a burger flipper cannot making 1000$ per hour unless everyone else is making 2000$ per hour after you finish an economics course
- pizzafeelsright 3y ago
  I would think politicians would need to understand economics considering they are making policy. Effectively, it is illegal for two consenting adults to agree to $19/hour in exchange for work. They can have sex, drink beer, smoke weed, and make a baby but determining between the two of them a value less than a Andrew Jackson is a crime. Does that seem right to you?
  - vivzkestrel 3y ago
    its not about what seems right, it is about what eventually turns out to be right, this is why you need to learn economics

nodesocket 3y ago

Expect fast food companies to just pass this onto consumers or leave California. California legislators should be required to read an economics book or at least consult with business leaders. Oppressed vs oppressor mentality, and buying of dem votes.

bdcravens 3y ago
Fast food restaurants are as likely to leave California as these workers are to move the low cost of living state like Mississippi.