One of the greatest impediments to unionization in the neoliberal period has been what economist David Weil calls “workplace fissuring”—a business model that, whether through subcontracting, franchising, or offshoring, is designed to distance labor from capital. Think of McDonald’s, which operates a system of over 13,700 restaurants in the US, run by over a million workers, but which admits employer responsibility for only 105,000 of them.
As part of an effort to organize this labor market, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and its allies launched a legislative campaign in 2021 to establish a framework in California for sectoral bargaining—i.e., bargaining on an industry or sector level, rather than the enterprise-level bargaining enshrined in American labor law—for fast food workers. Initially, SEIU’s legislation included the aim of holding “fast food franchisors jointly liable for labor violations at their franchisees’ establishments.” The industry fought hard to kill this language, understanding well that it was a key component of SEIU’s strategy. It was thus willing to concede on a number of fronts—the creation of a Fast Food Council to bring representatives of labor and management together, and even an increase in the industry’s minimum wage to $20 per hour—provided joint liability was taken off the table. What eventually became AB 1228, passed in late 2023, formally established the Fast Food Council as a vestige of the union’s sectoral bargaining...
Nana, a former member of the group After School, announced the progress of the investigation into the home invasion robbery and resented that the perpetrator continued to make false claims without ...