11/20/2023 0 Comments Buster and punch usCalifornia’s new council marks a departure, though, from more recent labor relations. The deal that has emerged will give the state’s roughly 550,000 fast-food workers a raise, taking full effect in April, from an hourly wage of $15.50 to $20.īusiness-labor-government bodies have existed before in the United States, during World War I and in the early years of the Great Depression. “It can deal with health and safety concerns it can deal with workplace violence.” “There are lots of issues the council can address,” says SEIU’s Henry. It will work alongside the state’s Department of Labor, which could monitor and enforce violations the council can highlight. The nine-member council will consist of two franchise owner-operators, two representatives from the fast-food mega-corporations, two union representatives, two rank-and-file fast-food workers, and one public member. With minor adjustments, it preserves the labor-management council that the law passed last year established. ![]() It guarantees the workers an annual wage adjustment of either 3.5 percent or the increase in the cost of living, whichever is lower. The deal that has emerged will give the state’s roughly 550,000 fast-food workers a raise, taking full effect in April, from an hourly wage of $15.50 to $20. (To facilitate this, the legislature had to pass a new law, which Newsom already has signed, enabling the sponsors of referendums to withdraw them from the ballot.) In a deal partially overseen by Newsom’s staffers, the companies agreed to withdraw their referendum from next year’s ballot in return for guarantees that the IWC will be defunded and the franchising bill, which had the votes to pass, would not be voted on. With the IWC funding already passed in the state budget and the franchising bill set to pass this week (which is the final week of this year’s legislative session), the industry relented. The first would make companies like McDonald’s, and not just individual franchise owners, liable for violations of wage, health, and safety laws the second would fund the long-dormant Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC), a division of the state Department of Industrial Relations that has the power to set wage levels and standards in a host of industries, with no limits on the size of its wage increases. Progressive legislators obtained the votes for two more bills. But the companies had won their ballot measure, and given the inanities of California’s direct democracy, the only way to make things right for rideshare workers would be to pass a different ballot measure, over the industry’s wishes (and dollars).Ĭonfronted by the prospect of another such megabucks industry campaign, SEIU began planning to wage a correspondingly costly opposition effort. (To keep that from happening again, the legislature just passed and Newsom signed a new law under which voters will be asked not to vote yes or no, but whether to “keep the law” or “overturn” it.)Ī year later, studies showed that drivers were making a paltry $6.20 an hour on net driving for Uber and Lyft. They saturated the media with ads telling Californians that a yes vote on their measure would increase drivers’ incomes, and thus misinformed, voters approved the measure. ![]() The industry was following in the footsteps of Uber and Lyft, which had spent hundreds of millions to persuade state voters to overturn a law that would have required them to pay at least minimum wages to their drivers. “This was just three frickin’ days after the bill was signed into law,” says SEIU President Mary Kay Henry. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that established such a council to raise those wages, the industry announced it would put $200 million behind a ballot measure it had devised to overturn that law. Last year, after the legislature and Gov. In a remarkable reversal of fortune, the state’s fast-food worker movement, created and steered by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has compelled the giants of the fast-food industry (both national stalwarts like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and Starbucks and local legends like In-N-Out) to withdraw their opposition to raising their workers’ wages and establishing a statewide labor-business board to deal with industry issues. In the realm of burgers and fries, California’s hot labor summer is sizzling. Gavin Newsom’s staffers, the fast-food industry agreed to withdraw a referendum from next year’s ballot that would have stifled worker power. ![]() In a deal partially overseen by California Gov.
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