SACRAMENTO, Calif.—A coalition of more than 50 groups, led by the Economic Policy Institute and including workers advocates and civic allies, is pushing a landmark law in California to empower fast-food workers and franchise-holders against McDonald’s, Burger King and other corporate giants that now hold a grip on both.

EPI basically crafted AB257, which narrowly missed passing the Democratic-run pro-worker State Assembly last year. It’s due for a vote in early 2022. It would establish “sectoral bargaining” in the fast-food industry, forcing corporate giants to negotiate with their 557,000 workers—80% of them workers of color—and local franchises whom those giants now control.

Right now, under federal labor law, especially when the GOP Trump regime ran the National Labor Relations Board, workers are punted from pillar to post when they try to figure out who to bargain with: The local McDonald’s restaurant or McDonald’s headquarters in Illinois. Same dilemma when fast-food workers, unionized or not, try to determine who broke labor law or imposed horrifying working conditions.

For their part, the franchise holders are also powerless against corporate HQs, whose execs can set the standards for everything from workers’ uniforms to the price of a Big Mac, regardless of the impact on the local restaurants.

AB257 would change all that, say the groups and its legislative sponsors, by putting workers, franchise owners, corporate executives and state regulators all at the same...

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