The California Legislature has just passed one of the most significant pieces of employment legislation in a generation. Assembly Bill 257, which builds on Progressive and New Deal-era legislation in the United States and successful models abroad, gives fast-food workers a collective voice in determining their working conditions on an industrywide basis.
It creates a process — a new “council” — for fast-food workers and their employers to come together, along with government officials, to raise wages and improve working conditions in all California restaurants affiliated with large fast-food chains. Gov. Gavin Newsom should sign the bill and then it should be used it as a model for reforms across industries and around the country.
For years now, under the banner of the Fight for $15, fast-food workers have been fighting for higher wages, better working conditions and union representation. They have organized countless protests and strikes and successfully pushed legislators to raise minimum wages across the country. But with few exceptions, they haven’t yet been able to win unions or collective bargaining agreements, which would give them an essential voice on the job.
The core problem is that U.S. labor law channels organizing and bargaining rights to the individual worksite, while making those rights extremely hard to exercise. In order for fast-food workers to win a union contract, a majority of workers at a given store need to vote to unionize. But employers have many...
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