McDonald’s workers want more say over California labor conditions. This plan would help them
Lizzet Aguilar knew to speak up when she couldn’t hug her son.
As the pandemic raged, she said she had worked for weeks at McDonald’s in Los Angeles without getting masks. She saw her co-workers being sent to clean other stores where people were getting ill.
Aguilar went on a strike, then filed a complaint to the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, commonly called Cal-OSHA. The blowback was immediate and fierce, she said.
Her hours shrunk. When she worked during breakfast hours, she was assigned to prepare all drinks by herself — a job typically reserved for two people. As a cashier, she said she was told to do things she normally had not done, from mopping the floor to carrying boxes of potatoes. She was ultimately fired.
R&B Sanchez, the company that runs the store, was fined more than $120,000 by the state’s labor commissioner for labor law violations and retaliation. In a statement, R&B Sanchez said it has appealed the fine, saying it does not “reflect the truth of what is actually occurring in our restaurant.”
Aguilar found a job at another McDonald’s, but she sees her story as a symptom of a broader problem: The fact that fast-food workers have little say over their working conditions. She and other fast-food workers are rallying for a bill that would make California the first state to establish a council setting pay and workplace standards for the entire industry.
The bill, which would also hold companies like McDonald’s liable for the acts of their franchisees, cleared a hearing in the Assembly Labor Committee last week.
“We want to have a voice in deciding what we want and what we need in our workplace,” said Aguilar, a leader in a group called Fight for $15 and a Union.
The legislation faces resistance from the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Restaurant Association, who say the proposal unfairly targets the fast-food industry.
“National brands are better positioned to use their scale and size to offer franchisees and their employees access to PPE, hand sanitizer, and other needed supplies to ensure safe working conditions,” the groups said in their letter to legislators. “The entire reason for the creation of this council is based on an unsubstantiated premise – that workers in chain restaurants have worse working conditions than other employees.”
Fast-food workers and benefits
California passed a number of protections, from additional paid sick days to emergency workplace rules, aimed at protecting workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
But many fast-food workers have not been able to take advantage of them, according to reports published this week, one by the Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus and UC Berkeley Labor Occupational Health Program, and another by the Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles.
Researchers at the Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles analyzed 55 local and Cal/OSHA complaints from fast-food workers between March and September and found employers didn’t provide sick and quarantine pay in more than half of the complaints.
An Asian American Advancing Justice and UC Berkeley survey of low-wage workers found that 27% of restaurant employees, which include fast-food as well as sit-down establishments, polled received no information on COVID safety protections.
“When workers here have gotten sick, management has told workers who tested positive not to tell coworkers that they had the virus, and told me, ‘If the City calls you, don’t tell them you got COVID-19 at work—tell them you got it anywhere else, but not here,’” Araceli Neva, a fast-food worker living in Richmond, told the researchers.
The survey also found that many workers thought nothing would change even if they reported their concerns.
“Workers may know how to file claims but if you’re an immigrant worker in the last few years when there had been a lot of attacks, the last thing you may want to do is to go to the government agency and be a troublemaker,” said Alejandra Domenzain at UC Berkeley who co-authored the survey. “It’s asking a lot to put it on the workers to stand up and fight for their rights.”
A fast-food industry council
Introduced by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), Assembly Bill 257 would create the Fast Food Sector Council, an 11-member board with representatives appointed by the governor and legislative leaders.
Workers, companies and state agencies would all be represented in the board, which would set an industry-wide minimum standards on wages and working conditions. The board would be required to review the standards at least once every three years.
It’s a broader version of what New York did in 2015, in which the state created a panel that set $15 an hour minimum wage for fast-food workers. In an industry where high rates of turnover make it tough for employees to unionize and collectively bargain, the council could be a tool for workers to increase their negotiating power, said Ken Jacobs at the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
“Having a council allows them to deal with the issues that are specific to the fast-food industry and creates a venue... where you can have workers come and raise issues of what’s happening in their industry,” Jacobs said.
The bill would also hold companies like McDonald’s jointly liable for labor law violations of their franchisees. Doing so could help franchise owners, Jacobs said.
“Right now, franchise owners have very little power because of franchise companies,” Jacobs said. “By setting common floors and rules, that puts them in a stronger position overall because corporations would be accountable for creating conditions.”
But the bill faces push back from the business groups, who said it equates to a “dismantling of the franchise business model” that will affect nearly 25,000 fast-food restaurants. The bill would effectively treat owners of franchises as employees, the groups said.
“In doing so, California is also making a per se determination that these owners and entrepreneurs are not small business owners, but middle managers of large corporations,” the groups said. “If AB 257 is signed into law, California would be removing the livelihood of business owners that make the franchise model a melting pot of entrepreneurship.”
The groups also said establishing the council would give an unelected body a power to establish labor standards, rather than legislators. Furthermore, there’s no evidence that workers in large fast-food chain restaurants have worse working conditions than other employees that necessitates this bill, the groups said.
“We do not seek special treatment from the California but do ask for the same treatment as any other small business,” the groups said.
Still, legislators and workers who gathered at the rally in front of the Capitol Wednesday said they are determined to push the bill forward.
“We know for there to be a true recovery, it has to be centered on worker voices, and right now the laws that we have don’t center worker voices,” Gonzalez said.
This story was originally published April 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
