Both sides billed the high-profile California fast food deal last year as a resolution to two years of escalating political tensions.

One of workers’ biggest wins in the Legislature during “hot labor summer,” the agreement in the session’s final week resulted in a minimum wage hike for employees and some guarantees for companies. In exchange, the industry agreed to stop fighting the issue at the ballot box and lawmakers backed off on even stricter regulations.

But a month before the new wage — $20 an hour for workers at fast food chains with 60 or more locations nationally — goes into effect, the temporary truce is unraveling.

As the Legislature pushes through a bill exempting fast food restaurants in airports, hotels and convention centers, Republican lawmakers who had vehemently pushed back on the wage hike are calling for the deal to be investigated, after Bloomberg reported that Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed for a bakery exemption that benefited a donor who owns two dozen Panera locations in California.

On Thursday, Newsom’s office denied the story and said their lawyers believe Panera and other chain bakeries aren’t actually exempt — a decision that could lead numerous additional businesses to scramble to prepare for a wage hike. In a Bloomberg story Friday, billionaire Greg Flynn says he did not seek a special exemption, though he met with the governor’s staff along with other restaurant owners to suggest a carve-out for “fast casual” restaurants. On Saturday, the California Restaurant Association weighed in, saying there was never any discussion of any brand seeking an exemption, including Panera. And in an interview with KNBC aired Sunday, Newsom, himself, called the report “absurd.”

The Service Employees International Union, which pushed for the legislation, said it agreed with Newsom’s reasoning. Senate Republican leader Brian Jones called for scrapping the fast food agreement altogether.

The renewed fights have moved to the local level, too.

Some franchise owners are cutting jobs in advance of the minimum wage increase, while workers have begun pushing for additional benefits in San Jose and Los Angeles, prompting businesses to gear up to lobby back.

Worker advocates are also pledging to push for job security measures once a first-in-the-nation fast food regulatory council (another part of the deal) is in place. On Friday, Newsom announced his seven appointees to the council, including Chairperson Nicholas Hardeman, chief of staff to state Senate leader emeritus Toni Atkins. The governor’s other picks are a mix of franchisees, workers and others.

And some McDonald’s franchise owners, who have complained they were frozen out from last year’s deal-making, are retaliating against state lawmakers who supported it as they seek other public offices in Tuesday’s primary. The new California Alliance of Family Owned Businesses PAC formed earlier this year as an offshoot of prior lobbying by owners of local McDonald’s restaurants.

Its opening salvo: attack mailers against Assemblymembers Chris Holden, a Pasadena Democrat running for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and Kevin McCarty, a Sacramento Democrat running in a crowded primary for mayor.

“In order to protect our family businesses in California now and into the future, it has become clear that we must more actively engage in politics across the state,” Kerri Harper-Howie, an alliance board member and a McDonald’s owner in Los Angeles County, said in a statement. “Politicians should know that if they agree to carry water for those who threaten our businesses, they will be opposed.”

Holden authored the bill forming a fast food council and mandating the wage hike, while McCarty was one of many Democrats who voted for it. The PAC has spent more than $300,000 against each. McCarty’s campaign manager Andrew Acosta said business owners are “trying to punish him for standing up for workers rights and higher wages.”

The PAC is also spending in an Inland Empire Assembly primary and in favor of Assemblymember Tim Grayson’s bid for the state Senate. Grayson, a Concord Democrat, voted in favor of the fast food deal last year.

The franchisee committee has spent more than $1.8 million so far this year. That’s not much compared to the tens of millions of dollars fast food giants such as McDonald’s and national industry groups poured into a campaign account for the effort to repeal the 2022 fast food law. The referendum was ultimately pulled from the ballot in last year’s deal. But it indicates the increasing activity of franchise owners in state and local politics.

Marisol Sanchez, who owns 14 McDonald’s restaurants in the High Desert north of San Bernardino and helps run her family’s larger franchise business, said she never got involved in politics before last year. But when SEIU pushed a bill forcing fast food corporations to share liability for labor violations with franchise owners, Sanchez saw “the destruction of the franchise model, and basically … the destruction of my livelihood.”

“It was a quick jumping into action,” she said, which involved meeting with lawmakers and now, contributing to the PAC.

The joint liability bill ultimately became a bargaining chip to force a deal on the $20 wage. Sanchez said franchise owners were the “collateral damage.” She attributes that in part to a prior lack of political organizing by franchise owners.

“We weren’t communicating and organizing,” she said. “I think we took for granted that the community understood that we were not all corporate-owned restaurants.”

She said she’s always tried to offer starting wages of $1 more than the minimum wage, and had been in the middle of an expansion in recent years, buoyed in part by more Californians moving inland during the COVID pandemic. But she’s cutting back in advance of the wage hike, putting off a drive-thru remodel and slowing down hiring.

The union that pushed for the deal criticized the new PAC, but said it would be unsuccessful.

“It’s shameful for these multi-billion dollar corporations to attack these pro-worker champions — and voters are going to see right through it,” Arnulfo De La Cruz, president of SEIU Local 2015, said in a statement.

Restaurant giants and a handful of local franchise owners have also registered this year to lobby in San Jose, where the new Fast Food Workers Union is pursuing a city ordinance mandating employers provide paid time off, predictable scheduling and “know your rights” training.

The union in recent weeks accused one city council member, David Cohen, of reconsidering his support in response to industry influence. Several franchise owners this month contributed to a new PAC whose main spending so far has been to send $18,000 to another political action committee that has bought ads against Cohen’s opponent in his re-election bid.

The contributions were first reported by San Jose Spotlight. Cohen’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but he told Spotlight he hadn’t withdrawn any support and was only considering if the proposed ordinance would work.

Fast food workers rally at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Aug. 31, 2023. Photo by Rahul Lal for CalMatters

Celeste Perez, a Burger King shift leader in San Jose who has been advocating for the ordinance, said she wants a firm commitment from council members and accused Cohen of shutting workers like her out after meeting with industry lobbyists.

Perez, 43, makes $17.75 an hour and said the wage hike to $20 in April was supposed to help her keep up with inflation. This year the restaurant cut her hours by five a week due to the upcoming wage increase and slow sales at the beginning of the year, she said, but she still has the same amount of work to do, and often deals with threatening customers.

She wants to afford to take a family vacation for the first time in seven or eight years, or at least attend her son’s soccer games, she said. “It’s really important for us to keep (moving) forward, not backward,” she said. “I think $20 is only one step.”

On Friday, the union called for a similar proposal in Los Angeles. Neither ordinance has been formally introduced yet.

As part of last year’s deal, the state’s new fast food council is prohibited from enacting new policies on time off and scheduling — and the deal prohibited cities from raising fast food wages beyond the new statewide minimum. But there’s nothing to stop local governments from pursuing other regulations, which would further raise costs for operators.

The proposals and the bakery exemption controversy are likely to be more fuel for franchise owners to fight back.

Brian Hom, the owner of two Vitality Bowls health food restaurants in San Jose, said he’s begun using his relationships with city council members to push back on the local proposal. He said he already sets employee schedules two weeks in advance, but is wary that a predictable scheduling requirement may prevent him from asking workers to come in last-minute if someone calls out sick.

Hom said he has the option to open a third store, but has declined to do so with the prospect of new requirements. He said he and other franchise owners are discussing with the company how much to raise prices in April, and is hoping that’s enough to cover the wage increase without cutting staff or their hours.

“Businesses are going to speak up,” he said. “The $20 is already going to cause restaurants to close.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

I have gazed on the walls of impregnable Babylon, along which chariots may race, and on the Zeus by the banks of the Alphaeus. I have seen the Hanging Gardens and the Colossus of Helios, the great man-made mountains of the lofty pyramids, and the gigantic tomb of Mausolus. But when I saw the sacred house of Artemis that towers to the clouds, the others were placed in the shade, for the sun himself has never looked upon its equal outside Olympus.

I’ve written about, and visited (one from a distance) the sites of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, seven monuments designated about 130 BC by the Greek poet Antipater as worthy of special note. We know of Antipater’s original list from his writing, above. His compilation is close enough to our “official” list that we can safely date the seven wonders of the ancient world at least back to Antipater. Later the walls of Babylon were dropped in favor of the lighthouse at Alexandria. The final list includes three tombs, a palace, two statues and a lighthouse. Only one of these survives, ironically the first to be built. The wonders were, in order of, and with approximate dates of, construction:

• Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, 2600 B.C.
• Hanging Gardens of Babylon, 605-562 B.C.
• Statue of Zeus at Olympia, 470-462 B.C.
• Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, 356 B.C.
• Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, 353 B.C.
• Statue of Helios at Rhodes, 292-280 B.C.
• Pharos (lighthouse) of Alexandria, 247 B.C.

Antipater was from Sidon on the Lebanese coast. Today it’s known as Saida, located at the westerly end of the Trans-Arabian oil pipeline. Sidon was about at the center of the seven sites. The farthest west wonder is at Olympia (statue of Zeus) and the farthest east in Babylon (Hanging Gardens), about 1400 miles apart. The seven locations pretty well delineate that part of the known world then considered important by the Greeks.

So: Why seven? Why not four or five or ten? After all, there are four points to the compass, and we have five fingers on each hand. Fact is, seven appears to have been a special, if not mystical, number since time immemorial. Consider, for instance, how often seven appears in classical literature and theological teachings:

• The Bible contains over 400 references to the number seven, starting with seven days of creation
• A Menorah has seven branches
• In both the Jewish (Kabbalah) and Muslim teachings, God dwells in the farthest of the spheres, the Seventh Heaven
• The Seven Sisters, daughters of Atlas, who are immortalized in the Pleiades star cluster
• The two most prominent constellations seen from the northern hemisphere, Ursa Major (“Big Dipper”) and Orion both have seven bright stars
• The “Seven against Thebes” were seven heroes who made war on the king of Thebes, according to Aeschylus’ play
• The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus were legendary martyrs immured in a cave near Ephesus. Upon awakening 200 years later, they convinced the emperor Theodosius II to embrace Christianity
• In oriental tradition, there are Seven Gods of Luck (not to mention Seven Samurai, a movie remade in the U.S. as The Magnificent Seven)
• Rome was founded on Seven Hills
• We have seven each: virtues, sages, purple passions, deadly sins, Pillars of Wisdom, and bodily orifices (I have, anyway);
• Of the 11 possible sums from a pair of rolled dice, seven is more likely than any other number to be the sum of the spots. (Ask anyone who’s played Monopoly or craps.)

And would you believe that every seven days, LoCO publishes this column…coincidence? I think not.

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Press release from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) announced today that fall-run Chinook salmon fry released for the first time from its Fall Creek Fish Hatchery in Siskiyou County are presumed to have succumbed to gas bubble disease in the Klamath River.

On Monday, Feb. 26, CDFW released approximately 830,000 fall-run Chinook salmon fry into Fall Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River above Iron Gate Dam. The fish were hatched at CDFW’s new, $35 million, state-of-the-art Fall Creek Fish Hatchery, which represents California’s long-term commitment to supporting and restoring both Chinook and coho salmon runs on an undammed Klamath River.

The salmon fry experienced a large mortality based on monitoring data downstream. Indications are the cause of mortality is gas bubble disease that likely occurred as the fry migrated through the Iron Gate Dam tunnel, old infrastructure that is targeted for removal along with the Iron Gate Dam itself later this year. Gas bubble disease results from environmental or physical trauma often associated with severe pressure change.

There is no indication the mortality is associated with other Klamath River water quality conditions such as turbidity and dissolved oxygen, which were reading at suitable levels on Feb. 26 and the days prior to release. The visual appearance of the dead fry detected by monitoring equipment points to gas bubble disease. Monitoring equipment documented other healthy yearling coho and Chinook salmon that came from downstream of the dam. 

The problems associated with the Iron Gate Dam tunnel are temporary and yet another sad reminder of how the Klamath River dams have harmed salmon runs for generations. CDFW will plan all future salmon releases below Iron Gate Dam until this infrastructure is removed. Poor habitat conditions caused by the dams and other circumstances such as this are reasons why CDFW conducts releases of hatchery fish at various life stages.

CDFW’s Fall Creek Fish Hatchery continues to hold approximately 3.27 million healthy, fall-run Chinook salmon. Additional releases are planned later in the month.

The annual fall-run Chinook salmon production goal for the hatchery is to raise and release 3.25 million fish – 1.25 million released as fry, 1.75 million as smolts, and 250,000 as yearlings. The additional stock of fall-run Chinook salmon remaining in the hatchery exceeds the annual production goal and will help offset losses experienced with the initial release of fry.

The Eureka Police Department is responding to a car crash at the corner of Wabash and Broadway in Eureka this morning. Just before 11 a.m., a vehicle traveling westbound on Wabash plowed through Family Nails & Spa, causing severe damage to the northwest corner of the building. 

Traffic does not appear to be impacted at this time. We’ll update this post when we know more.

Mass transit along California’s North Coast is difficult. The long distances between rural communities are trouble for ordinary battery-powered electric buses, which don’t have the range to make there-and-back trips. Hydrogen buses, however, are able to make the long journey. And thanks to a $38.7 million grant, Humboldt Transit Authority is purchasing 11 state-of-the-art buses and building a hydrogen fueling station.

Guests Peter Lehman of the Schatz Energy Research Center and Jerome Qiriazi join the show to discuss Humboldt’s forthcoming fleet of hydrogen buses.

You have probably heard the story about the Presidential election of 1916. It was when Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the United States, the votes from California were a deciding factor.

A delay in reporting the “final votes” to make the election decisive took place in Northwestern California — especially in Humboldt County.

The election of Woodrow Wilson, and because California had swung the election to a Democrat, and that it required nearly two days for a final decision because some precincts in the redwood forested West were “lost,” were enough to make cantankerous Colonel Robert McCormick, publisher of the then noisy Chicago Tribune, dip a vitriolic pen.

He was so angry, he editorially dubbed California “The Champion ‘Boob State’.” He knew he could safely do this, since his circulation and advertising worries did not extend that far west — so, name-calling was safe.

Discovery of the Colonel’s outburst is revealed in a faded clipping from the Chicago Tribune. This provides a sequel to the story of how Humboldt County played an important role in electing President Woodrow Wilson.

Just in case you have forgotten — or you haven’t heard — this is what happened in Humboldt County.

The outcome of the race between Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic choice and Charles Evans Hughes, Republican, was uncertain from the start. When voters went to the polls on Nov. 7, 1916, they were in a nip-and-tuck race.

That evening, however, returns from New York showed the state had been carried by Hughes. In the next four hours, Hughes piled up a commanding lead in the eastern states.

Failing to recognize there was more to the United States than their immediate world, the New York World and the New York Times, both of which supported Wilson, conceded the election to Hughes. Neither the United Press nor the Associated Press declared him elected, although it seemed almost until Wednesday morning. At that time. Wilson was only two electoral votes behind. The Hughes camp was enthusiastic.

In California, all of the counting had been completed, even though the balance of the state had cast 925,000 votes. Election observers began to realize the outcome would depend on who won the state’s 13 electoral votes. By Thursday, the result had narrowed to at least a single county. That was Humboldt. It was the isolated county in the redwood area which held the history-making answer.

Morris DeHaven Tracy of United Press, San Francisco, was a former Eureka newspaperman. Taking on the problem and working on it, he traced the final results through his old friend, County Clerk Fred M. Kay.

At 7 p.m., the Humboldt County Clerk called Tracy: “I got it. I just found an error in counting. About 1,800 votes were erroneously put in the Hughes column. They are Wilson votes and he carries the county by about 1,600 votes.” At that exact moment United Press flashed to the East: “Wilson Carries California!”

Col. McCormick.

In his Chicago Tribute stronghold, publisher McCormick was extremely upset — just as though someone had pulled the rug out from under him — for on Nov. 10, he wrote an editorial: “Nobody at Home in California.” This was his angry scolding:

Several times California, in a stubborn and belligerent mood, has almost put the alternative of war or humiliation upon the rest of the Nation. Some day, when Japan is ready, a California offense will result in the seizure of the Philippines and Hawaii.

California makes the trouble and expects the rest of the country to protect it. It may make a war and drag the rest of the country into it. California is our junker state in all except willingness to strengthen the ability of the Federal Government to meet the trouble it may make and is perfectly willing to make.

California now seems to be concerned chiefly for the right to bluster. The moral conditions of some little rotten spot in the interior of the United States can be understood. But California represents a long coastline which it demands the Navy of the United States to defend. It wants a Pacific Navy. It seems to have voted for a Pacific Navy.

How a State which, when it is not scared itself, is scaring the rest of the nation to death, could have given even two votes in a precinct to the Administration which maintains Josephus Daniels as schoolmaster of the American Navy, is a question beyond normal intelligence.

But giving Wilson the vote it did, California, with its record, presented itself as the champion boob state of the American Republic.

The State which has put the Nation on the edge of war several times kept it in suspense for forty-eight hours in this election, when the issue was one which should have been decided in this outpost State in two hours.

Some day California may have a Japanese Governor — for a while. The rest of the Nation eventually will annul his commission but he may be there for a while.

The editorial closed with a quotation from one of Kipling’s characters — a chaplain, who said: “When people insist in getting in the neck they are first made from the neck up.”

Since the Colonel has been gone some time, more than likely his spirit haunts most California polls each Presidential election. And it probably sputters and shouts when it is unhappy.

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The story above was originally printed in the September-October 1980 issue of the Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society. It is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.

March is kicking off with a “Brr!”

The National Weather Service’s Eureka arm has been tracking this weekend’s storm and predicts snow levels could fall as low as 500 feet above sea level over Friday night.

From NWS:

A major winter storm remains on track this evening.

Though most of the area is experiencing a break in showers at the moment, the next cold front is quickly approaching shore. Snowfall so far has been heavy above 3000 feet but has been inconsistent at lower elevations. That will change tonight with snow levels expected to quickly drop as low as 1000 to 1500 feet. 1 to 2 feet is likely on high elevation passes through tomorrow.

Snow showers will linger through Sunday.