Fast-food workers vow to battle effort to overturn new California law
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A coalition of business owners in California announced yesterday they had enough signatures for a ballot measure to overturn a historic law that will give fast-food workers more power.
Why it matters: The law gives California fast-food workers more say on wages, hours and working conditions.
- Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act, or AB 257, on Labor Day despite major opposition from business groups, who said it would make owning a fast-food business much harder and more expensive.
Driving the news: The coalition, headed by the National Restaurant Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the International Franchise Association, said Monday it had gathered over a million signatures to get the issue on the 2024 ballot.
- The coalition says the law would increase food prices at restaurants by as much as 20% while creating "a massive new government bureaucracy to regulate locally owned restaurants."
The other side: Union leaders and workers who helped get the law passed denounced the effort.
- "Although the fast-food corporations are spending millions of dollars to lie to California voters and to silence their workers, we will not allow them to undo this massive victory," Angelica Hernandez, a McDonald's employee, said in Spanish during a news conference yesterday.
What's next: California counties have to count the signatures and make sure they're valid. If the coalition has enough signatures (it needs about 623,000), the law, which is set to take effect Jan. 1, will be put on hold until voters decide its fate.
- Mary Kay Henry, Service Employees International Union president, said the organization will do whatever it takes to keep the law intact, adding that they won't use traditional tactics like TV ads but will focus on grassroots mobilization.
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