California is poised to enact a new method of boosting pay and improving job conditions for fast-food workers, and in the meantime has the potential to nudge European-style sectoral bargaining—or something like it—closer to playing a meaningful role in the US labor market.

A bill (AB 257) pending in the state legislature would create a council that sets workplace standards covering the state’s fast-food industry, including wages, working hours, health and safety, training, and other workplace conditions. The measure is awaiting a Senate floor vote after winning Assembly approval in January and passing through Senate committees. The 13-member council would include government officials and representatives of fast-food workers, franchisees, and corporate brands.

The sector council model isn’t new to the US, but it isn’t widely used. California’s version also isn’t true sectoral bargaining, in which worker-selected labor unions negotiate industrywide standards with the major employers in a particular sector.

But enacting the California legislation and advancing that council model would mean a big power shift toward workers and labor unions, which have struggled to make headway into low-wage and hard-to-organize industries such as fast food.

US labor law, in particular the National Labor Relations Act, emphasizes union elections and bargaining at the individual...

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