Fast food workers urge more minimum wage increases
The California Fast Food Workers Union is urging the state to again raise the minimum wage for fast-food employees.
According to a letter sent to the statewide Fast Food Council last month, the union is asking for a $20.70 wage starting in 2025 and a $21.40 wage in 2026. The proposed yearly 3.5% increase is a response to rising inflation, the letter said.
The council was formed to establish wages and regulations for the fast-food industry through legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2023. That legislation also delivered fast-food employees one of their largest wage bumps ever, raising the minimum wage from $16.21 to $20 beginning in April. The union's letter called the almost 25% jump in wages a "major achievement."
But several union members said that restaurants have cut their hours in response to the wage increase, all but offsetting the bump in wages. Even after April, fast-food workers still face "impossible" choices between paying rent or phone bills, the union's letter said.
Gilberta Acevedo, a San Jose Taco Bell worker, said she's only working a quarter of the hours that she used to. She said her manager told her that sales are down and her hours were reduced accordingly, but she's suspicious of that.
She said her store had a monitor that displayed every sale, and she hasn't seen any changes. Plus, the store has hired more employees and given them the hours she used to work, she said. Now, without her usual hours, she said she has fallen behind on her trash bill.
"I feel really sad. My supervisor, whenever she needed me to stay extra time, I would always stay to help out," Acevedo said through a translator, adding that she thinks the store is retaliating against its workers. "So, to go from having regular hours to now 20 to 25 [over two weeks], it makes me really sad."
At a San Jose watch party hosted by the workers union to follow the Fast Food Council's meeting Wednesday in Sacramento, workers urged councilmembers to listen to workers like Acevedo. And many amongst the crowd of about 30, which included Spanish-only speakers, expressed frustration that they couldn't access a translation of the meeting.
Several speakers during their public comments to the meeting, including Acevedo who spoke remotely from the watch party, asked the council to dedicate a public hearing specifically to listening to stories from fast-food workers across the state.
The San Jose watch party was a part of the union's statewide effort to pressure the council into action on its labor demands. As workers from the union's Los Angeles chapter chanted "Si se puede" during their public comment at the meeting, some of the San Jose workers nodded their heads along to the chants.
But the brand-new council was more preoccupied with simply getting itself going. In its second-ever meeting, the council's discussions focused more on hiring support staff and understanding how to create agendas.
"We're a new board entirely," said Nick Hardeman, the council's chair. "We're building from the ground up."
Fast-food workers weren't the only group trying to enact a change from the council. Several public commenters asked the council to recommend exemptions from the $20 wage increase for ice cream parlors.
And Matthew Sutton of the California Restaurant Association asked the council to give restaurants time to adjust to April's wage increase before taking any more action.
"What you've done is enormous, right?" Sutton said, referring to the wage increase. "Four dollars overnight: that's beyond shocking."
But speakers at the public meeting and the watch party said that they didn't have time to wait for change.
"I'm tired. I have been working in the fast-food industry for over 20 years," said Lourdes Farfan while also giving public comment remotely from the San Jose watch party. "You need to hear us out urgently."