Posts tagged Fast Food
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
KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE FAST FOOD WORKERS IN CALIFORNIA
June 14, 2022 // There’s a lot going on here with California being a proving ground for another measure with far-reaching implications: The state’s fast food workers could also soon possess the power to bargain, if progressives get their way. Assembly Bill 257 – the so-called Fast Food Accountability and Standards (FAST) Recovery Act – aims to essentially transform the state government into a union-like entity for the fast food industry. The bill calls for “minimum standards on wages, working hours” and more for this specific industry, and it would grant the labor commissioner extraordinary powers to act against companies and levy fines without even a peep of a formal filing from workers. The kicker for this bill: Worker complaints and associated demands would land in the hands of a “sector council,” which would possess board powers to set regulations at will for all fast food chains (all of the Pizza Huts and Popeyes and Taco Bells and every chain in between) with 30 or more California locations.The council would bypass the bargaining table and propel these new “standards” toward the state government for implementation and enforcement on issues of wages, working conditions, and so on. Kimberly Ricci, Labor Relations Link,
Opinion: Starbucks baristas who join a union may not get what they bargained for
April 21, 2022 // Unions historically had little traction in the full- and limited-service restaurant industry. High turnover, combined with a younger workforce that desires flexibility over rigidity, made a poor match for organized labor’s 20th-century-value proposition. Ten years ago, the SEIU made an expensive play to change that, through a campaign called the Fight for $15.
What a Surge in Union Organizing Means for Food and Farm Workers
March 25, 2022 // By organizing with the Warehouse Workers for Justice, many were able to get their jobs back and have their demands met. “What’s really interesting is that there’s a huge movement right now for worker centers and unions to work together ... to essentially surround the industry,” Oliva said. “So if an employer busts the union, the worker center emerges. If the worker center is unable to organize the workers, the union organizes them.”
US unions see unusually promising moment amid wave of victories
March 16, 2022 // Gebre said the nation’s unions should send far more organizers and money to back the union drives at Starbucks and Amazon. “The rest of the labor movement should be willing to lend a hand,” even if they don’t get any of the members, said Gebre, who was recently named Greenpeace’s chief program officer. “That’s what solidarity means.”
What the Amazon union do-over in Alabama means for the future of retail
February 16, 2022 // U.S. consumers, especially younger ones, harbor new expectations about the workplace that businesses may not be able to ignore.
Tudor’s Biscuit World workers say no to 1st West Virginia fast-food union
January 25, 2022 // Workers at a West Virginia franchise of a regional fast-food restaurant on Tuesday rejected efforts to form a union that would have been the first of its kind in the state. Immediately after the vote, union organizers announced that they had filed unfair labor practice charges against the company.
Workers across the US are rising up. Can they turn their anger into a movement?
January 3, 2022 // So far, increasingly militant workers are lacking something vital: a leader who can unite them all. Will that change?