Posts tagged Fast Food
Commentary: Union myths drive bad public policy on fast-food industry
May 30, 2023 // In California right now, the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, is using bogus data and false claims to enhance its efforts to organize restaurant workers. Congress needs to pay attention because what happens in California doesn’t stay there for long. Last year, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 257, an SEIU-backed scheme to create an unelected council of union appointees to regulate workplace standards for fast-food outlets. The union justified its proposal with a report claiming that these businesses were uniquely bad violators of state labor law.
Focus organizing drives on workers without college degrees, US unions told
May 8, 2023 // n contrast, unionization hasn’t taken off nearly as rapidly at many blue-collar, lower-paid workplaces. No other Chipotle restaurant has unionized since workers in Lansing, Michigan, voted last August to make theirs the nation’s first unionized Chipotle. Only one Amazon warehouse is unionized in the US, just two Apple stores and four Trader Joe’s. Those companies have mounted fierce anti-union counterattacks to slow and they hope stop the spread. Chris Rosell, the Teamsters’ organizing director, says one reason unionization of blue-collar workers often doesn’t catch fire is that it’s frequently easier for anti-union consultants to scare and deter those workers. “Blue-collar workers often aren’t as educated about this union-busting stuff,” he said. “They could be more susceptible to these kinds of tactics.” Rosell said the Teamsters often run elaborate campaigns that seek to inoculate workers from the pressures and propaganda from anti-union consultants. He said the Teamsters’ president, Sean O’Brien, hopes to double the union’s membership and focus organizing on such area trucking, warehouses and sanitation work. Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a labor rights group, says it’s often harder to unionize blue-collar workers because they tend to have less economic security than educated workers and have greater fear of what will happen to them if they’re retaliated against, perhaps getting fired, for seeking to unionize.
McDonalds President Says It Might Be ‘Impossible’ to Operate in These Key States
February 1, 2023 // While California has led the pack with fast-food worker protection movements, Virginia followed with a similar bill just six months later. This month, it introduced Virginia's House Bill 2478. While not committed to a specific minimum wage, the passed law would require a council of state legislators, elected officials, industry representatives and fast-food workers to get together and regularly oversee worker conditions and compensation.
The South Has a New Union — and Workers Have Black Women to Thank
January 17, 2023 // Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), a first-of-its-kind cross-sector union offering membership to fast food, retail, warehouse, care, and other service industry workers across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. USSW is a continuance of Raise Up, the very active southern chapter of the Fight for $15 and a Union that formed in 2013 and took root in North Carolina. USSW will function as a part of the Service Employees International Union, a labor union that represents nearly 2 million workers in the U.S. and Canada.
Do You Want Fries with That Shakedown?
January 10, 2023 // California’s government has outdone itself with AB 257, a controversial sop to unions that will hurt the poor and raise prices in the fast-food industry.
Op-ed: Gov. Newsom Pays Unions Back for Recall Rescue
September 15, 2022 // “The new budget passed by lawmakers in mid-June and signed by Governor Newsom two weeks later will take California’s existing tax deduction for union dues payments and turn it into a tax credit capped at 33% of dues paid,” Patrick Gleason, Vice President of State Affairs at Americans for Tax Reform, said in Forbes. “Changing the deduction to a credit makes the union tax break more generous and benefits those who don’t itemize or have a tax liability.”
Op-ed: Big Labor Eats Small Business in California
August 31, 2022 // America’s leading antibusiness policy incubator, also known as the state of California, is at it again. The state Assembly passed the so-called FAST Recovery Act in January. It was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Aug. 11. The next stop will be a vote on the Senate floor, followed by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. If the bill becomes law, it will drive up fast-food prices as much as 22% and wipe out the franchise business model, which provides nearly 800,000 jobs in the state.
Opinion, California: State Senate should spike AB 257
August 17, 2022 // You’ve probably seen the self-serve machines at fast-food restaurants. If Assembly Bill 257 passes, there will be a lot more of them. The bill is sponsored by Assemblymember Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, and already has passed the Assembly and two Senate committees. The bill would set up a new state bureaucracy, the Fast Food Sector Council, within the Department of Industrial Relations, with members appointed by the governor, the Assembly speaker and the Senate Rules Committee. In the bill’s language, “The purpose of the council would be to establish sector-wide minimum standards on wages, working hours and other working conditions related to the health, safety and welfare” of fast-food workers.
FAST Act Advances to Full Senate as Largest Restaurant Operator Flynn Weighs In
August 16, 2022 // IFA President and CEO Matthew Haller. "This bill forces an unnecessary tax on working families across the state during a time of historic inflation. It would unequivocally hurt locally owned and operated restaurants and have sweeping impacts on a huge portion of the restaurant industry." Last December, David Kaufmann of Kaufmann, Gildin & Robbins wrote a fiery piece against the FAST Act in the New York Law Journal. "The state whose recently enacted AB-5 law has in significant part triggered the nationwide supply chain breakdown is now threatening to turn franchising into a socialist endeavor," he wrote.
Op-ed: Proposed ‘FAST Act’ directly assaults CA’s restaurant industry
August 8, 2022 // Assembly Bill 257 – known as the “FAST Act” – has been pushed through the legislative process under the guise of helping California workers in the counter-service restaurant community. If enacted, the bill – sponsored by the Service Employees International Union – would set aside existing labor laws in favor of new rules developed and enforced by 13 unelected political appointees with zero oversight. In short, the FAST Act will take away great jobs for workers, harm consumers, raise prices, stifle competition, diminish entrepreneurship and create layers of unnecessary bureaucracy – all because of a false narrative. limited-service restaurant industry, unelected statewide council, wage and hour violations, California Restaurant Association