One year after California established a first-of-its-kind $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers, a hike of up to 70 cents is scheduled for a vote. California’s Fast Food Council, which includes fast-food employees, restaurant owners, and state officials, adopted a proposal Wednesday to discuss a cost-of-living increase at a future meeting.
The Council’s next meeting, which is scheduled to be in April or May, will be for more debate rather than a vote on the decision. Before the voting, the Council heard several public remarks. Business owners claimed there hasn’t been enough time to evaluate the impacts of the $20 minimum wage, which has already resulted in higher consumer costs and less employment for workers. Workers and labor organizations said the rise was necessary to confront growing living costs in one of the country’s most costly states. Veronica Gonzales, a fast-food worker, spoke remotely from a room filled with members of the California Fast Food Workers Union’s San Jose branch. She told a translator in Spanish that the cost of her rent and meds had increased. “I can’t live on this wage,” she stated.
The likelihood of a salary raise, the first for the Council since the state established it last year alongside the $20 fast-food minimum wage, has sparked a heated discussion about California’s unusual approach to regulating the fast-food business. California has the highest concentration of fast-food workers in the United States, with over half a million.
California law enables the Council to regulate fast-food outlets that are part of chains with more than 60 locations nationally, including annual salary increases of 3.5% or a rise in the consumer price index, whichever is less. When the California legislature first approved a fast-food-specific minimum wage in 2022, McDonald’s USA President Joe Erlinger opposed the measure in a public letter, saying it “should raise alarm bells across the country” because it could influence other states to pass similar legislation. Â
