When it takes effect on April 1, fast food workers in the state will have among the highest minimum wages in the country.

California fast food workers will be paid at least $20 per hour next year under a new law signed Thursday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

When it takes effect on April 1, fast food workers in the state will have among the highest minimum wages in the country, according to data compiled by the University of California-Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. The state’s minimum wage for all other workers is at $15.50 per hour and is already among the highest in the nation.

Newsom’s signature on Thursday reflects the power and influence of labor unions in the nation’s most populous state, which have worked to organize fast food workers in an attempt to improve their wages and working conditions.

  • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
    2047·
    9 months ago

    Here’s a (not so) funny anecdote: I went to Italy years ago and got McDonald’s equivalent of a double quarter pounder with cheese for shits and giggles. Dollar for euro, the price was about the same, if not a little cheaper, in Italy. Now couple that with the fact that Italians have access to healthcare, are paid a living wage, and have ample vacation pay.

    These companies could pay their workers properly and provide benefits if they wanted to, they have the money. They don’t because fuck you

    • LetMeEatCake@lemm.ee
      783·
      9 months ago

      But did you ever stop to think about how Italy’s system impacts the most important among us: the wealthy shareholders? A truly humane system would prioritize them at all costs.

      /s (should be obvious, but I’ll put it there to be safe.)

    • bean@lemmy.world
      4·
      9 months ago

      They still monkey around the hours in these places to avoid paying any employee too much. I’ve worked in similar industries and you have to fight for shifts, or deal with taking shifts last minute on your days off.

    • Bob@feddit.nl
      41·
      9 months ago

      This is also anecdotal but I’ve met a lot of Italians where I now live and they all say pay and working conditions in Italy are poopoo. I suppose it’s all relative though.

  • sapient [they/them]@infosec.pub
    79·
    9 months ago

    This is an awesome victory for fast food workers and unions. People constantly shit on the folks working in customer service and kitchen jobs, but they are often gruelling and unpleasant. The people there certainly deserve it more than the CEOs and shareholders exploiting them (I mean, I’m against the entire structure, but if we’re working within that structure, then ye .).

  • PunnyName@lemmy.world
    482·
    9 months ago

    Hopefully this will cause a push to higher wages across the board. California is expensive to live in, and $20 / hr is reasonable, but difficult, to live on.

  • MagikarpeDiem@lemmy.world
    43·
    9 months ago

    For people who are afraid that raising wages will mean less people employed: for the most part, wage demand is pretty inelastic. Studies have shown that wages changes really don’t mess with numbers employed that much. Most places only want to employ the least number of people they can already. They can’t go lower, generally.

    • xenoclast@lemmy.world
      281·
      9 months ago

      Of course it doesn’t. The amount of money these people make is insignificant compared to the billions siphoned off by corporations to payout themselves and their shareholders. Wage suppression is about control.

  • terwn43lp@lemmy.world
    406·
    9 months ago

    cool, now give everyone a living wage, maybe a universal income, & you’ll have solved poverty

      • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
        403·
        9 months ago

        You’ll just inflate shit.

        We’ll let’s see, inflation is running rampant irregardless of wage increases, so I think I’ll go with the wage increases.

      • Zaktor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        261·
        9 months ago

        Need government regs on corps if you wanna solve poverty.

        Regulations like “what is the minimum salary you can pay your employees”?

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    34·
    9 months ago

    Money is literally worth half of what it was when I graduated high school in the 90s. My senior year I worked as a grocery clerk and made $9.50/hr while in a small city in Oregon (not expensive California). Math works out for me.

    • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.worldEnglish
      30·
      9 months ago

      Well, there’s this, and this to say you’re right. Had the minimum wage tracked in line with production, it would be ~$26 today. If it had tracked in line with inflation, it would probably be closer to $21.45.

      That it’s been flatlined for so long means people working for minimum wage have been getting steady pay cuts for 50 years.

  • Orionza@lemmy.worldEnglish
    314·
    9 months ago

    Now what about the rest of everyone? There need to be regulations for everyone, including gig workers, to make more money.

    • curiousPJ@lemmy.worldEnglish
      171·
      9 months ago

      Gig workers gimped themselves voting to remain as contractors in prop 22. And now there’s that stupid 80%(?) majority rule to make amendments.

      • hayes_@sh.itjust.works
        24·
        9 months ago

        In those workers’ defense, the delivery companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a disinformation campaign to trick the public into thinking that voting for 22 was in their own interest.

        It’s absurd that it was on the ballot in the first place.

        • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
          12·
          9 months ago

          Yep, I remember riding in Ubers and conversing with the drivers about it at the time. A lot of their responses were to the effect of “well Uber told us X on a notification on my phone.” And I would ask them do you really think Uber has your best interest in mind? I hope I actually woke a few of them up, but most did little to no research, and were actively telling people to vote for it.

        • Ech@lemm.eeEnglish
          10·
          9 months ago

          In those workers’ defense, the delivery companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a disinformation campaign to trick the public into thinking that voting for 22 was in their own interest.

          Probably the single easiest proof that the companies see the proposed changes as a threat to their bottom line. They’re not spending that much money for their workers, they believe it’ll cost less to sway opinion than it would to change policy. That people still buy into the bs is really disheartening.

  • Pj55555@lemmy.world
    242·
    9 months ago

    Go after those who caused the increased cost of living not employees who are simply trying to survive because of it.

    • whofearsthenight@lemm.eeEnglish
      21·
      9 months ago

      rents have probably doubled in the last decade, absurd to think that wages wouldn’t need to go up. Groceries in the last year as well. COVID was clearly a cover to gouge.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    221·
    9 months ago

    I wonder if McD’s “automated” franchises are the preemptive move by the company expecting more of this to happen. The writing was on the wall and they moved to compensate. They make a big deal of it like it’s some cool thing, but IRL they’re just reducing human overhead.

    • Heresy_generator@kbin.social
      10·
      9 months ago

      Businesses are always seeking to replace people with not-people in every way they possibly can so I don’t think you can really draw a cause and effect here.

    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
      9·
      9 months ago

      Brazil have a shit minimum wage and McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants are full with automated cash registries and self service.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
      81·
      9 months ago

      They will absolutely replace all the workers with robots the second they can, even at 5.00/hr wages for workers.

      Might as well bleed them until then.

    • aesthelete@lemmy.world
      7·
      9 months ago

      That’s always the idle threat, but the reality is that they likely don’t want to invest in the machines anyway.

      I think a more likely phenomenon is that some (likely smaller) chains will be like “fuck it” and close up shop in CA.

      Or the most likely scenario is that they just pad the prices a little more in CA and keep the chains open.

      Long term I think people will just adjust to it and it’ll be normal. Chains that are looking to maintain their “value” positioning will just absorb it out of their profit margins like they do in other localities.

    • whofearsthenight@lemm.eeEnglish
      127·
      9 months ago

      The “automated” stores are less about reduction in labor cost and more about improving the overall operation and growing sales (thus increasing jobs.) It does help labor cost because the labor that is staffed is more efficient, but that’s more of a tertiary outcome. They still employ roughly the same number of staff, and potentially will employ even more as efficiency of the process grows.

      Simplest way I can explain this is thinking about the order kiosks. One of the worst parts of fast food is that most people aren’t actually trained at birth how to order right, and secondarily it introduces another couple of humans who are fallible and won’t get it correct. EG: customer comes into McDonald’s and says “I want the whopper basket.” Crew person, internal: “wtf are they talking about, I guess I’ll give them a big mac.” Then the customer comes back pissed off because they actually wanted a quarter pounder with fries, it has to be remade distracting the kitchen, manager, that crew person, etc further.

      Also, the entire time the customer is ordering, it’s engaging a whole crew person. To scale up and take more orders, you have to add an additional crew person for each order you want to take concurrently, and because customer flow is not 100% predictable, this isn’t even really possible. Most McDonalds have like 4 kiosks, and you’ll only find that they’re all used at the same time for maybe a grand total 3-4 hours a day. To replicate that with a human, you would have to be like “I need you to work from 7:23-7:59, and you to work 11:46-12:07, and you to work, 12:03-12:07…” which literally no one is going to do, and isn’t actually that predictable regardless. No automation means some customers are going to come in, see a line, and peace out. This means lower sales, and lower overall employees.

      With automation, the demand can be filled much more often and a whole massive point of complexity is removed. In the example above, the customer comes in wanting a whopper basket, looks at the menu and goes “oh they call it a quarter pounder here” and clicks the buttons. Because they can now capture more demand, kitchens are busier and there are more orders to deliver, so they move that person who was going to be extremely inefficient by comparison serving customers 1:1, and move them to a kitchen position or to an expo position.)

          • Sarcastik@lemmy.world
            3·
            9 months ago

            You lost all credibility when you said it was “less about the costs”

            I recently hired a mid -level manager from McDs strategy team and it’s at least 90% about cost reduction. They’re watching the adoption curve, because older and urban demographics still mostly order at the counter and refuse to use the self ordering lines. That’s why they offer free fries and free upgrades at select locations for using self ordering to force the greater adoption.

            Also they’ve started reducing headcount in locations where adoption is higher, but still limit hours to hourly workers.

            It’s all right there if you want to believe it, but good luck with the spin.

        • whofearsthenight@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          I mean, they’re definitely working on it, but so far it’s tech that isn’t ready. also, it’s still a similar problem, at least for now. The thing I’ve heard about is automated french fry machines. Basically, a big fryer that places fries into the fryer, and then transfers them to the bagging station. From what I’ve heard, they’re very expensive and don’t work well. But the strategy there is more around improving human foibles - estimating the amount of fries needed for rushes more accurately, etc. The person is still there working the station, but assisted by tech. Also improving capacity. That one person that is supposed to be doing all of the things now has less to do, and so can focus on making sure orders of fries are ready to be bagged by expo people. This means they’re bottlenecked less often, can serve more customers, and thus hire more staff.

          I mean, make no mistake, we’re headed towards a mostly automated future for these types of jobs, most likely. Tech will improve, get cheaper, etc. But this has been the way things have been for the last 20-30 years. Watch a drive through in most mcdonalds and they have a machine that makes drinks. Before that, having a machine that dispensed fries into the basket was a luxury. Even the grill being like a big panini press was an innovation. So far, this has all led to more jobs. In the case of fast food, just producing consistent results quickly has led to growth. I’d check out youtube or ticktok. I think McDonald’s even puts out a lot of videos these days showing what’s really happening in the kitchen. It’s a little bit fascinating.

        • whofearsthenight@lemm.eeEnglish
          44·
          9 months ago

          You might want to check out, uh, history. It’s rife with “omg this new technology is scary and bad” like the cotton gin, or more recently, computers.

          • mrpants@midwest.socialEnglish
            41·
            9 months ago

            You might want to read a little deeper. Technology always removes jobs. People shift to new jobs. The unknown is if new jobs will exist or if we’re entirely post scarcity.

              • Sarcastik@lemmy.world
                1·
                9 months ago

                But when will we finally be free of the pages upon pages of job listings for stable boys. Who will care for all the horses?!

    • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
      2·
      9 months ago

      The McD’s or BK’s I have visited with ordering computers and only one till, looks to have around the same number of staff, mostly they just stopped taking orders while packing them.

  • ChlorineAddict@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    9 months ago

    Out of all the pictures likely taken during the announcement they had to use the one with the Wendy’s gal picking her nose?

    • bluestribute@lemmy.world
      15·
      9 months ago

      It’s a good thing we weren’t automating anything before this! Nothing at all. Companies DEFINITELY weren’t researching and implementing automation until right now when the minimum wage increased. And they DEFINITELY will start hiring more people if the wages go down again.

    • Yokozuna@lemmy.world
      75·
      9 months ago

      Yep, many fast food places are already implementing AI taking orders in the drive thru, not to mention all the kiosks in the lobby. Only a matter of time until making the food is automated and all there will be is a skeleton crew of workers to make sure everything is running smooth.