What’s at stake?
Labor leaders call the new fast food workers minimum wage a win for workers, while some worry how the law will affect local businesses.
Hundreds of thousands of fast food workers saw their hourly wages bump up to $20 across California this month – including as many as 10,000 in the Fresno area.
The new statewide minimum wage for fast food workers just kicked in April 1 after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1228 back in September.
Local labor advocates are calling it a win for fast food employees and a “huge step” toward addressing the pay gap between rank-and-file employees and fast food company’s millionaire and billionaire executives.
“Those workers are well worth that $20 an hour,” said Ben Takemoto, a former Starbucks employee who was placed on leave and terminated following an unsuccessful attempt to unionize a northwest Fresno store. He now works as a community organizer with Valley Forward.
“They have been well worth $20 an hour the entire time that they’ve worked in fast food.”
Others worry about its impact on local businesses.
News reports indicated that San Joaquin Valley locations of Fosters Freeze and Mod Pizza closed over the past month, and workers speculated the closures resulted from the new law.
In the case of Mod Pizza, the Clovis location was among 27 that recently shut down nationwide. Two other Fosters Freeze locations closed in Fresno in 2023, including one that got bought out by a Starbucks, The Bee reported.
Neither company immediately returned Fresnoland’s requests for comment Monday.
Will Oliver, president of the Fresno County Economic Development Corporation, said in an email to Fresnoland Monday that while the increase “promotes a step toward a living wage,” it also may bring challenges, including higher prices for consumers and increased automation.
Oliver added while the impacts at larger franchises that already use automation may be “minimal,” he’s more concerned about smaller businesses trying to hire and retain employees.
“The pressures may be most acute for family-owned restaurants not beholden to this new regulation,” he said, “but nonetheless now forced to compete with it.”
Dillon Savory, executive director of the Fresno-Madera-Tulare Kings Central Labor Council, countered that it’s always easy to “point the finger” at labor while asserting that corporate greed is at the root of the issue.
“Fast food companies make billions of dollars for their shareholders, and they pay their people so little that they’re on public assistance,” he said.
“We should really be focusing on how this is going to impact people in our community,” he added, “and the local money it’s going to bring back to our economy.”
Fresno fast food workers in unique situation
There are over 10,000 fast food and counter workers in the Fresno area out of the over 427,000 in California, the state home to the largest number of fast food workers in the country, according to May 2023 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Only employees of restaurants with at least 60 locations nationwide are covered under the new law, however, according to the California Labor Commissioner’s Office.
Savory said it could take a couple of paychecks before fast food workers see the effects of the higher wages. Not all workers necessarily even know about the law, he said.
Fresno workers are also in a unique situation, in that there isn’t a strong union presence among them across the Central Valley.
The Service Employees International Union sponsored the fast food minimum wage legislation and backed the recently formed California Fast Food Workers Union.
“Just like there’s not an Amazon or Starbucks that’s organized here yet,” he said, “A lot of the unions that are taking on these kind of groundbreaking or industry-changing campaigns, they start in a major metropolitan area.”
“It’s not that we’re not trying here or that we’re not interested,” Savory added. “It’s just that movements take a while to develop.”
This squares with Takemoto’s experience with unions in Fresno. Growing up, his family was “adamantly anti-union” and he’d mostly heard about them in a “negative light.”
“I think the everyday fast food worker has no idea what unions could potentially do to benefit them and change their circumstances,” he said.
He’s optimistic, however, about what AB 1228 might signal for current fast food workers here and all across the industry.
“I think the fact that labor has heavily advocated for this $20 an hour wage for fast food workers,” he said, “will start to open their eyes.”
Are you a fast food worker in the Fresno area?
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