Restaurant Groups Submit Over 1 Million Signatures For Fast Food Labor Referendum

623,000 Valid Signatures Needed To Become Proposition in 2024

A group of restaurants and restaurant trade groups submitted over 1 million signatures to the California Secretary of State’s office on Monday, likely enough to place a measure on the ballot over the fate of AB 257, a bill to create new labor union style of council to set minimum health, safety and employment standards across the California fast food industry.

The fight over Assembly Bill 257,  authored by Assemblyman Chris Holden (D-Pasadena) , began in February when Holden initially introduced the bill. Over the next several months, proponents and opponents of the bill fought in the Assembly and Senate over it. The bill, also known as the FAST Act, was subsequently pared down, eventually settling on creating a Fast Food Council of 10 members comprised of worker’s delegates, employer’s representatives and state officials that would set minimum wages, working conditions, and set hours for fast food employees in the state.

Many proponents, such as labor unions, zeroed in on the notion that wages could rise to as high as $22 an hour under the law, while many restaurant and franchise groups greatly opposed AB 257, noting that restaurants would be hit unfairly hard by the bill, with many being more likely to close due to the industry still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and recent economic troubles. Increased prices due to supply chain delays and an industry-wide worker shortage were also held up as big issues that were left unresolved by the bill being passed.

Despite this, AB 257 passed the legislature in late August, with Governor Gavin Newsom signing he bill into law in early September. However, the victory was short lived, as a coalition of restaurants, formed Save Local Restaurants, and immediately filed for a referendum over the bill. While bill proponents initially dismissed the referendum effort as nothing more than restaurants angry over the bill being passed, job losses and higher costs in fast food restaurants became an effect of the bill and quickly changed voters minds in the last several months.

According to the Secretary of State’s office, the group needed to get around 623,000 signatures by December 5th in order to make the November 2024 ballot and put a temporary halt on the bill while the matter is settled at the ballot box. On Monday, Save Local Restaurants announced that over 1 million signatures had been gathered. Some signatures are expected to be uncountable due to the voter not being registered, or being a double signature, or other reasons. Even with this, Save Local Restaurants noted in a press release that they are confident that it will be on the November 2024 ballot.

“The FAST Act would have an enormous impact on Californians, and clearly voters want a say in whether it should stand,” said Save Local Restaurants. “The measure would establish an unelected council to control labor policy in the counter-service restaurant industry, cause food prices to increase by as much as 20% during a period of decades-high inflation, and harm thousands of small family-, minority-, and women-owned businesses across the state. Given less than one-third of Californians support AB 257, it is no surprise that over one million Californians have voiced their concerns with the legislation. The Save Local Restaurants coalition is committed to helping ensure this bad law will not go into effect and voters have their voices heard.”

A possible end for AB 257

Opponents quickly challenged the signatures on Monday, with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) alleging that some signatures were obtained fraudulently by having petitioners pay voters to sign the petition. While the Secretary of State could neither confirm nor deny that an investigation  into that  was currently ongoing, they also noted that counting signatures would begin soon.

“Both sides were really passionate about this,” explained James Kramer, a Baltimore-based proposition tracker, to the Globe on Monday. “Fast food workers and unions, they really want this to go through because they want more of a say and they want to set some of the standards themselves. Fast food companies and local managers, they are very worried that this will lead to higher costs and having to fire people. But the voters? California is interesting because as liberal as many think the state is, there is a fair track record of voters just shutting down anything like this when they get a chance. They stopped sportsbook betting this year, they’ve stopped affirmative action several times in the past, and those people for this law know this. No voter, especially those being hurt economically right now, wants to hear of higher prices in anything, and that’s what this law does essentially.”

Click here to read the full article in the California Globe

Decision on ‘California rule’ will impact who rules California

SACRAMENTO, CA - JULY 21: A sign stands in front of California Public Employees' Retirement System building July 21, 2009 in Sacramento, California. CalPERS, the state's public employees retirement fund, reported a loss of 23.4%, its largest annual loss. (Photo by Max Whittaker/Getty Images)

On its surface, the case heard last Wednesday by the California Supreme Court in CalFire Local 2881 vs. CalPERS doesn’t seem that important. At issue is the so-called “California Rule,” an obscure legal doctrine relating to public employee pensions. But for California’s beleaguered taxpayers, the case is one of extraordinary importance because its outcome will determine the extent to which the local governments will look to taxpayers to shore up failing pension plans even more than they already do.

Labor interests have argued that under the “California Rule,” no pension benefit provided to public employees by statute can ever be withdrawn without replacement with some “comparable” benefit, even if it’s deferred compensation for services not yet provided, and even if the Legislature determines that citizens who are not public employees are unfairly suffering as a result of prior legislatures’ mistakes.

More than a decade ago, California politicians, seeking to curry favor with public-sector labor, began enacting laws to significantly increase public employee compensation. Among these enhanced benefits were a series of laws which allowed public employees to spike their pensions. For example, a 2004 state law allowed employees with at least five years of service to purchase up to five years of additional credits — commonly labeled “airtime” — before they retire. Under this plan, a 20-year employee could receive a pension based on 25 years of contributions.

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Who is an employee? New standard for 2 million workers spurs clash at California Capitol

CapitolAshley Hutton Stanfield’s favorite thing about her job is the freedom to work in the “nooks and crannies of my day.”

Four years ago, after leaving her career at a medical devices company to raise her children, Stanfield became a sales consultant for Arbonne International, a multi-level marketing firm that makes beauty and nutrition products.

Stanfield said she coaches about 1,000 clients per month on how to use and sell a 30-day health regimen. But she can manage her business from the dining room of her Fair Oaks home, between dropping her kids off and picking them up from camp, or take a phone call while running on the treadmill at the gym. She has leisurely breakfasts with her family in the morning and finishes up what she needs to after putting her two daughters to bed.

“I was able to achieve more with this opportunity than I ever could have achieved in that other life,” Stanfield said. “I’m present in every moment.”

Arrangements like Stanfield’s are looking more uncertain after a California Supreme Court ruling on independent contractors in April. That unanimous decision, adopting a new “ABC test” for defining employees, threw nearly three decades of legal precedent up in the air. …

Click here to read the article from the Sacramento Bee

Judge Rejects Uber Settlement, Saying It Lowballs California Labor Claims

As reported by Forbes.com:

A federal judge has thrown out a proposed $100 million settlement negotiated by a Boston lawyer on behalf of more than 200,000 Uber drivers in California and Massachusetts, saying it places too low a value on potentially costly claims drivers could bring under California labor laws.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, who has consistently ruled in favor of attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan over Uber’s fierce objections, rejected the settlement because it allocated only $1 million for claims under California’s Private Attorneys General Act, a law that allows employees to sue for civil penalties on behalf of the state. The California Labor and Workforce Development Agency estimated the value of those claims to be $1 billion if a court determined Uber drivers were employees and not independent contractors, as Uber maintains.

The judge also dismissed as meaningless an unusual provision in the settlement that would increase it from $84 million to $100 million if Uber held a successful initial public offering, saying he couldn’t consider that part of the deal since he had no assurance it would happen. (Uber, which has a private market value of $28-$60 billion based on recent venture capital rounds, told the judge “it would not be proper” to respond to his questions about an IPO.)

The settlement came on the eve of the first trial, and Chen’s rejection puts …

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WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? Mandatory Union Membership Hurting Workers

When workers are forced to join a union in order to work, it hurts workers pretty much the same way as business monopolies hurt consumers, according to a report released Monday by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.

According to the report, in those states where union membership is required in order to have a job, unions will have higher dues and be far less efficient than in states that don’t require union membership as a condition of employment. The report argues that these negative outcomes are likely caused by unions not having to worry about proving their worth in order to keep their members.

“Businesses with monopolies charge higher prices and operate less efficiently than they would facing competition,” the report argues. “Labor unions operate no differently.”

In business, a monopoly occurs when there is only one supplier of a particular commodity. When this happens, the one company can control prices while also delivering a subpar product because the consumer doesn’t have the choice to go elsewhere. Recognizing the potential harm this may have on consumers, lawmakers have passed several laws to prevent monopolies over the years. And as the report argues, laws in compulsory-union-membership states legally cause union monopolies that are prone to the same negative behaviors business monopolies are.

“Union financial reports reveal that they charge workers roughly 10 percent higher dues and pay their full-time top officers $20,000 more annually in states with compulsory dues,” the report found.

James Sherk, the Heritage scholar who wrote the report, told reporters at a policy forum that the findings aren’t at all surprising, though the subject hasn’t yet been thoroughly studied before then.

“No one’s taken a look at this yet, and I realized the reason no one has taken a look at this yet is it’s only recently the data has become available,” Sherk noted. “In the 2000s, Elaine Chao when she was labor secretary modernized the union financial reporting information. She required the unions to itemize all their expenditures over $5,000 and she basically made all these reports available online.”

“We summarize in the report, it’s roughly 10 percent… higher dues that the unions charge when they can force you to pay dues,” Sherk continued. “When the unions can force you to pay dues they maximize their revenue.”

Sherk argues that the higher dues go to pay the union officers, instead of benefiting union members.

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Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation