One year into California’s landmark effort to regulate conditions for more than a half-million fast food workers, the state council appointed to oversee the industry has barely settled on how to conduct meetings.

The nine-member fast food council, composed of business owners, workers and union representatives, recently decided to consider a cost-of-living adjustment to the $20 fast food minimum wage that went into effect last April. At its yet-unscheduled next meeting, it plans to discuss raising that requirement by 3.5% or last year’s rate of inflation, whichever is lower.

But it won’t do much more than that. After two marathon meetings in January and February in which a smaller group of the council members listened to hours of comments from workers and their allies, and restaurant owners and their allies, the council chair put the raise on the next agenda for discussion only — not a vote.

That’s the closest the council has gotten to a policy decision since it began meeting last March.

Food council Chair Nick Hardeman, a former state Senate staffer Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed to be the sole “public” member of the council affiliated with neither business nor labor, said the pace so far is to be expected. He likened the work to starting a new department from scratch, and said he and the council have spent the past year hiring three staff members, and hopes soon to establish rules on how to conduct future votes.

“Putting together the groundwork so that we would be able to move toward substantive conversations on policy took a lot of time,” Hardeman said. “It is hard to come to decisions. And there’s a lot of people who are coming from two completely different sets of life experiences when we’re talking about issues, and you see that play out in every single meeting.”

In 2021, the Service Employees International Union proposed a European-style state council by which fast food workers and business owners would bargain directly with each other over wages and working conditions on behalf of the entire industry. After the state’s Democratic-dominated Legislature and Newsom approved the law, fast food corporations spent millions to try to overturn it.

The resulting compromise Newsom signed in 2023 mandated a $20 minimum wage for workers at fast food restaurants belonging to a chain with 60 or more locations nationwide, and a statewide council — split evenly between business and labor, with one neutral chairperson — that could approve further raises, but little else.

Council members on both sides have said they want to find compromises to improve the industry, but meetings — about half a dozen since last March — have gone much the same way: discussion mostly focused on what the council should discuss.

A flood of workers across the state has attended those meetings or called in to raise concerns about wage theft, employers cutting hours and the cost of living.

Twenty dollars an hour, while more than 20% higher than the state’s regular minimum wage, is still far from what the average single Californian without children needs to make ends meet, according to a calculator devised by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Workers and their advocates on the council have sought a hearing for workers to more comprehensively air allegations of workplace abuses.

An accompanying flood of franchise owners have implored the council to vote down future increases, warning of restaurant closures and detailing ways they’ve cut hours or staff to absorb the costs of the minimum wage increase. Some owners have emphasized their own humble backgrounds, a nod to the path the franchised restaurant industry provides to business ownership for people of color.

Conflicting information

Since the wage increase last April, researchers have issued competing reports about its effects.

A recent business-commissioned report from the firm Berkeley Research Group pointed out there were 10,000 fewer jobs in California fast food between June 2023 and June 2024 — the latest month available for that dataset. It also concluded the law increased menu prices by 14.5%.

But in another study touted by labor, UC Berkeley researchers said Berkeley Research Group failed to account for changes in other restaurant sectors, or control for the way seasonal swings in the industry play out differently in California than in the rest of the country. The UC Berkeley report found the wage boost had little effect on fast food jobs and only 1.5% increases in menu prices.

More up-to-date federal data shows jobs growth in California’s limited-service restaurants industry has been mostly flat for about a year and a half.

Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an expert in minimum wages, said it’s still too soon to definitively measure the effects of the wage increase, and cautioned against comparing California jobs without also comparing it to a similar, slight nationwide slowdown in restaurant jobs. He noted in an email that “it is safe to say that a substantial portion (majority, but not all) of the labor cost increase has been passed through to prices.”

None of the studies capture whether workers’ hours have remained the same.

A key ingredient missing from the fast food discussions: corporate representatives for McDonald’s, Burger King and the other fast food titans.

Fast food workers chant at a press conference where Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation boosting wages to $20 an hour at SEIU Local 721 in Los Angeles on Sept. 28, 2023. Photo by Alisha Jucevic for CalMatters

When lawmakers first considered a fast food council, McDonald’s and other franchisor companies poured millions of dollars into the campaign to beat back a more expansive proposal.

Now, they’ve been largely absent from council meetings. Instead, it’s their franchise owners — who pay royalties and branding fees to operate the restaurants independently and are responsible for wages and employment — who speak up at the council meetings to plead against further wage increases.

McDonald’s, Burger King, Yum! Brands and other franchised fast food chains did not respond to CalMatters questions

Wages and hours

Restaurant owners and their advocates on the council have urged their colleagues to focus elsewhere. Krispy Kreme franchise owner and council member Rich Reinis suggested last week the council should discuss how to support workers affected by the Los Angeles wildfires or employees afraid to show up to work amid increased immigration enforcement.

“We can talk about a lot of reasons to postpone the conversation,” said council member Maria Maldonado, director of the California Fast Food Workers Union. “But workers are still waiting for us to talk about the (cost-of-living adjustment) and to make this council useful.”

The council had scheduled a hearing with state labor agency leaders in January to discuss its role in fielding complaints from fast food workers, but postponed it due to the LA fires and has yet to reschedule it.

Rich Tieu, who owns two McDonald’s restaurants in Santa Clara County, welcomed the council’s slower pace. He had owned his McDonald’s for about a year when the $20 wage increase went into effect last April, he said, and he’s gone from about 80 employees to fewer than 70 by not filling vacancies when employees leave.

Council members “haven’t really fully organized to where they actually have items on the agenda,” he said. “They kept talking about increasing labor (costs) and that’s all they’ve been talking about. I feel like they should actually look at other factors.”

Marina Orozco, a college student and Chipotle worker in Sacramento, has been hoping the council will approve a raise to help her afford rent and a recent tuition increase. She said last year she worked about 30 hours a week at other fast food restaurants, and now can only get about 20. And she wants a hearing on working conditions.

“Even though this is a new process and it might take some time,” she said, “it feels really special to finally sit down with our bosses and share our feelings and ideas.”

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