Workers rally for new fast food union
Labor group wants adequate wages, more work hours and better workplace protections
Hundreds of fast-food workers gathered in Los Angeles on Friday, Feb. 9, rallying support for a newly created union aimed at ensuring adequate wages, increasing work hours and boosting workplace protections.
The California Fast Food Workers Union will be affiliated with Service Employees Union International Union, which powered the campaign to boost California's minimum wage for certain fast-food employees to $20 an hour.
Friday's rally at the South Central Avenue office of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee was held as a membership drive for the new union, which supporters say is the first of its kind in the country.
One industry expert has called it a “fake union” with virtually no teeth.
It won't be a traditional union involving an election certified by the National Labor Relations Board, so it will lack the protection of federal labor laws that require fast-food employers to sit down and negotiate contracts.
To go the traditional route, they would have to organize store by store, many of which are owned by franchisees. That would involve a long and arduous process, as evidenced at Starbucks where employees have labored long and hard to unionize 370 stores out of more than 15,000 stores.
“SEIU believes every worker has a right to join a union whether or not they have a collective bargaining agreement at their worksite,” supporters of the new union said. “A worker simply needs to fill out a union membership form.”
Michael Saltsman, executive director at the Employment Policies Institute, termed the California Fast Food Workers Union a “fake union” that lacks a funding mechanism and has “no apparent power beyond collecting feedback from the union's existing supporters.”
“I would submit that they didn't want to go store by store because they knew they couldn't win store by store,” he said.
But others, including July Monroy, who has worked at a McDonald's in Los Angeles for three years, are hopeful for a change she says is long overdue.
“We need to be protected as soon as possible so we don't get treated like pieces of garbage,” the 40-year-old L.A. resident said. “The AC was out at my location over the summer and the temperature got up to nearly 120 degrees by the grill. Management didn't fix it until winter.”
California's fast-food workers have already gained traction in their fight for higher wages.
SEIU's campaign ultimately led to the passage of Assembly Bill 1228, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law last year.
The legislation, which takes effect April 1 for businesses with more than 60 locations nationwide, will hike the minimum wage for more than half a million California cooks and cashiers to $20 an hour with annual pay increases of 3.5% over the next three years.
That will affect McDonald's, Carl's Jr., Jack in the Box and Subway, among others.
The International Franchise Association says AB 1228 will add about $250,000 to the operating cost of each restaurant it impacts.
“Food prices will have to go up, customers will feel it, and restaurant owners will look for other ways to manage the additional cost while also keeping their small businesses afloat,” said Jeff Hanscom, the association's vice president of state and local government relations.