Over the last two years, millions of workers have quit their jobs in search of greater pay and better treatment. For workers in the restaurant industry who were at the forefront of the Great Resignation, California Governor Gavin Newsom may have a solution that could incentivize them to stay.
Governor Newsom signed the FAST Recovery Act, or FAST Act, into law on Sept. 5, in an effort to improve wages, training and health and safety conditions for fast food workers in the state. Going into effect January 2023, the FAST Act will establish a 10-member Fast Food Council with the power to set industry-wide employment standards, essentially unionizing California's 556,000 fast food workers under one law.
"The enactment of [FAST Act] is seen as a huge victory by unions and many nonunionized fast food workers," says Belle Hsu, senior attorney editor at Thomson Reuters' practical law labor and employment division. "It allows workers to participate in a form of collective bargaining without having to undergo union organizing efforts in an industry that has been difficult to organize, due to high turnover and franchise ownership."
Notably, the new labor law could raise the minimum wage for fast food workers as high as $22 an hour in the new year. Although, between backlash to the new labor law and a currently unknown council, it may be too soon to tell what influence the FAST Act will have.
"The likelihood of raising the minimum wage to over $20 in 2023 is unclear," says Hsu. "It is...
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