STAFF REPORT

Approximately 500,000 fast-food employees in California are paid at least $20 per hour as of Monday, which is $4 more than the state minimum wage.

The new rate, which is applicable to restaurant companies with more than 60 outlets nationally, is the outcome of laborers’ years-long struggle for improved pay and working conditions, particularly in California’s fast-food sector.

The act also provides that the first fast food council in the USA be set up and will be comprised of people who represent both the restaurant and labor sectors. The council may regularly increase the wages annually by 3.5%, or such to keep the inflation in check, whichever is great. Another responsibility of the council is to work with the existing state offices to consider issues around unfair wages, for example, and possible rules about regular safety checks for workers in fast food retailers.

McDonald’s cashier Jaylene Loubet stated, “I definitely think it’s a very big deal. The cause we’re fighting for is justifiable. All we’re requesting is what is just”.

However, the owners of some fast food franchise sites claim that they have already lowered employee hours, raised menu pricing, or done both in preparation for this additional expense in the last few months. Furthermore, a lot of the impacted proprietors just have one restaurant.

A franchisee named to the new council, Michaela Mendelsohn, stated: “There’s talk about showing both sides of this.” It seems to be one-sided to me. I believe that in order for us to succeed, our staff members must also succeed together.

A joyous and lavish dinner

Currently holding 18 McDonald’s restaurants, Scott Rodrick opened his first one in the San Francisco Bay area thirty years ago.

In general, Rodrick stated that he has increased prices by 5% to 7% over the past three months in order to account for the increased wages.

“No stone has to be left unturned as a business owner dealing with this kind of extraordinary overnight change, you know, a 25% increase in wages,” Rodrick remarked. Further saying: “And so we have looked at price, although I can’t charge $20 for a Happy Meal. My customers’ appetite to absorb menu board prices is not unlimited.”

Rodrick stated that rather than reducing employee hours, he would expand his delivery business and decide whether to postpone major capital expenditures like remodeling a dining room or delaying the purchase of new grills or rooftop air conditioning systems.

In the world of McDonald’s, people create Happy Meals, grin at drive-through patrons, and manufacture hamburgers. Although technology is used in the workplace significantly more than it used to be, Rodrick added, “I’ve just been able to reallocate where they work within the restaurant. It hasn’t supplanted the importance of human beings in the workplace.”

Six El Pollo Loco restaurants are owned by Mendelsohn, who has long supported workers’ rights and assisted transgender workers in finding employment.

However, in her opinion, it is not optimal to abruptly raise one sector’s pay: “You’re placing people in a desperate situation when you specialize just in fast food and grow so quickly. How do we make it?” she inquired. “But the two main ways are raising prices and reducing labor. And we don’t want to have to do either right now.”

Mendelsohn noted that in anticipation of the pay increases, her menu items’ prices have increased by roughly 3% to 4% since February. By the following week, she intends to install self-serve kiosks in place of rehiring the departed employees. In the coming year, for drive-thrus, she might also use artificial intelligence.

Mendelsohn remarked, “I just wish it was done over a longer period of time and it wasn’t just fast food.” She claimed that the previous $15 minimum wage in the state was effective because it was extended to all businesses and was imposed gradually over a number of years.

Workers Are Struggling Financially And Feel Unsafe.
Loubet, who has been a college student and a McDonald’s cashier for six years, said she resides in the same one-bedroom apartment as her parents that they have shared since the 1990s.

For nine years, her mother has been employed at the same McDonald’s. Loubet said that her mother’s pay increased from roughly $15 per hour to roughly $17 per hour over that period, a rise that fell well short of inflation.

In order to have a little bit more room, they intend to move out of their apartment.