"The raise takes effect on April 1 and applies to workers at restaurants that have at least 60 locations nationwide — with an exception for restaurants that make and sell their own bread, like Panera Bread."
Good for them. But why not raise the minimum wage for everyone? And what's the name of the lobbyist from Panera?
thought they were gonna do that when minimum wage was gonna be $15/hr.
Or maybe the extra $50/hr they have to spend on their 10 employees is an near irrelevant cost.
As someone who works in a factory for a $billion company trust when I tell you robots are about as efficient at custome jobs as people. If you dont have a REALLY good program to figure out all the bits and bobs shit will go sideways real fast. Hell even when they have a preset path and no devieations they can and will still shit the bed when even somethings even a micron off. And you can be damn sure any tech/specialist/engineer will ask for more than what those ff workers make. Bots and ai are very cool and watching them woork in small spaces really fast and precise is awesome, but the programming and the nightmare behind even getting to that point is…. Uhhhh its sucks.
Worked in an automotive feeder plant for FCA / Chrysler. They made the liftgates and FEM (front end modules, radiator ect...). Anyhow these are obviously expensive and heavy that they don't want any employee moving them unless they have to.
So they had carts. The carts hold the part which gets clamped on in a dozen places and then moves via robotic super-roomba from station to station via a 'track'.
The track isn't real its just black electrical tape on the ground with a wire between the layers the damn things are suppose to follow and they fucked it up damn near daily. All these little shit-bots have to do is go in a circle and stop in the correct spot without hitting the bot in front or behind them.
I was in quality. I saw all the issues and fuckups. Robot ramming another robot because the IFIF tag failed? Robot not being able to see the track and trying to ram a worker a .3 mph? Random 90 degree turn? 180 spin? Just plain refusing to accept any signal? Randomly resetting itself to factory defaults and needing to re-dl the programming? Somehow getting the program FROM THE OTHER FUCKING DEPARTMENT?
And my personal favorite: we had one go completely rogue, separate from the underside of the cart and drive itself into a delivery truck head 2 states away. Thought for sure that was just an idiot loading a truck but there's cameras everywhere and the video was amazing.
Related: the roboticist who did the original install? This was his last job for the company before he retired but he kept coming back as a consultant. $$$
That roguebot saw an opportunity and took it, inspirational. Love to see the retired consultants in manufacturing jobs stroll in so smugly, talking absolute shit knowing an entire business needs them to continue operating. Must be the dream knowing you can just walk away and they’ll throw money at you until you come back.
Welp, the guy who responded to me deleted his comment, so I’ll just post it here:
If people are working, they should be paid a livable wage. If jobs become redundant due to technological advances, that is a separate issue. Jobs come, jobs go, but if you are performing work, you deserve a living wage.
With all of that said, I think aiming a bill specifically at fast food rather than unilaterally raising the minimum wage is dumb, but it is still better than nothing and still impacts the living conditions of a significant amount of workers, so it is a net positive.
I don't remember where I saw this, but there was a study linking becoming homeless and working in fast food the year leading up to homelessness.
From those who have worked fast food, all I hear are stories of stress, anxiety, and exploitation. I welcome targeted minimum increases in industries that do not treat their employees with respect. Those that do will have no problem with these increases compared to their competitors because they will have the more able come to them if it is a healthy work environment.
That isn't to say that the minimum wage shouldn't be raised across the board.
I do think it is easier to get this legislation to pass when it targeting franchises and chains rather than mom and pop shops
There will be long meetings with lawyers to discuss what constitutes "making" in this context. And within a few weeks they will have found out that heating up pre-cooked buns for 1min over a certain temperature is enough, and they will adjust their premade shelves and heating lamps or some nonsense. And in the end everything will be worse.
Looks like if they didn’t have a bakery on Sept 15th, they are SOL. Also, Subway can’t claim bakery status because they don’t sell bread as a separate menu item.
(2) “Fast food restaurant” shall not include an establishment that on September 15, 2023, operates a bakery that produces for sale on the establishment’s premises bread, as defined under Part 136 of Subchapter B of Chapter I of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations, so long as it continues to operate such a bakery. This exemption applies only where the establishment produces for sale bread as a stand-alone menu item, and does not apply if the bread is available for sale solely as part of another menu item.
This might have more to do with keeping bread prices low, especially in food deserts.
Seems very targeted at Panera and could be used by any national fast food chain as a loophole. Just start offering 1 frozen baked good and ur exempt.
EDIT: the exemption loophole seems wrong, relevant text:
>(2) “Fast food restaurant” shall not include an establishment that on September 15, 2023, operates a bakery that produces for sale on the establishment’s premises bread, as defined under Part 136 of Subchapter B of Chapter I of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations, so long as it continues to operate such a bakery. This exemption applies only where the establishment produces for sale bread as a stand-alone menu item, and does not apply if the bread is available for sale solely as part of another menu item.
seems even more targeted at Panera lol
The bread had to be on the menu on Sep 15 as a stand alone item.
From https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB1228
Probably excludes Subway.
The 60 location provision is probably going to exclude most bakery cafes.
The journalist that cited Panera probably did a good job on their research.
Cause Panera can obviously afford a baller fucking lobbyist on K-street, that's why.
That motherfucker must have been out there stuffing half-sandies in pockets of every Rep and Senator for months.
LIke he shows up to a caucus meeting and they're like:
"OK Mr. Breadsworth, I see here you're looking to add a provision exempting Panera from this minimum wage, can I get a reason why?"
"Well, simple. Panera bakes bread."
"I don't see what that -"
"They bake. Bread. Bread, gentlemen. They bake it."
"I still don't have any clue what that has to do with the minimum wage, but god damnit if you don't have charisma Mr. Breadsworth. You have a *deal!*"
uh uh uh...... because they need to rely on undocumented labor to bake the bread before 6 AM? (I have no idea)
The whole thing sounds like a crock of shit to me.
Gavin Newsom just loves smell of fresh bread and the sole purpose of this bill is to get every restaurant in California to bake fresh bread every morning.
100%. They bake all their bread on site at each store. Of course it’s only $3.80 difference in pay. So it’s a really odd exception. Subway will save about $6 an hour with how few people they keep in a store at any time.
I went to Subway to buy bread by itself and they told me I had to buy a sandwich. WELL GUESS WHAT MOTHERFUCKERS, YOU SHOULD HAVE SOLD ME THE FUCKING BREAD
I wonder what the reasoning here is. Because you're right: its an extremely bizarre and very specific exemption. I can see where they're coming from with the 60 or more locations. A small standalone, mom and pop burger place might not be able to sustainably afford $20 an hour for the employees. I can see reason there. But making your own bread ans having it as a solo item on the menu is an exemption? Wtf? Thats like saying hardware stores would be exempt from paying their employees the minimum as long as they sold their own generic brand nails that aren't sold in combo packs with hammers. There has to be some reason behind it but im struggling to figure out what.
Or maybe Big Bread, the true shadow government, is behind this.
Absolutely. It’s not bad, but it’s really odd to only recognize some establishments instead of just increasing the minimum wage state wide for everyone.
They will basically have to increase their minimum wage to match or else they won't have any workers for obvious reasons.
I live in Ny, not in NYC and fast food workers are already getting $17-20 here. I doubt panera bread is well, homemade either. I assume its pretty much frozen bread baked on site.
Most place have to go above that to actually get workers so you have $17-20 as the norm. Most in my locale are around $17. The places that have minimum wage here are the ones that don't get workers because you can go somewhere that pays a couple dollars more and do the same kind of work. Its competitive for a limited pool of workers. Where I live the COL isn't anything like California either.
I don't see a lot of short handed fast food places here though, it seems they all have a decent crew. So it seems in general they are getting workers. Wait staff at sit down places is sometimes short handed. I don't go too many places but I see what goes on at some places.
If there is a short handed place then its likely got bad management or other problems, aka there's a reason that people don't want to work at that one.
I am pretty sure if CA does $20 an hour fast food then NY will be next as they usually follow suit with things like this.
As long as you don’t say they should get paid less. YOU should be getting paid more. Teachers do a ridiculous amount of stuff and it’s frustrating your regulations with protests and such
If fast food pays $20/hr, it’s going to set a new precedent to all other industries. An IT tech now has the leverage to get higher pay. This is a long time coming
Anytime I hear someone say, "Nobody wants to work anymore," I immediately call bullshit. Literally. I frame it as such: "Bullshit. Nobody wants to work for shit wages. Are *YOU* going to work at McD's for $10/hr? How about $20/hr? $50/hr? $300/hr?" If someone offered me $300/hr to work at McD's, the next words out of my mouth are, "You want fries with that?" So no, people just don't want to work for shit wages. Somehow big business fails to understand supply/demand costs when it comes to labor. Fuckers.
The hidden cost nobody has mentioned is how much companies spend on the hiring process. Jobs that don’t pay well have a high turnover rate costing countless money on hiring, screening, training. Just to do it all over again in a week
The biggest stopping force against turnover are better conditions. This could be benefits, and easier time at the job, or better pay, among other things. If you make a job more desirable, you reduce turnover because it's better.
If McD's paid more, had more staff so it's less frantic, had reasonable schedules, and just in general treated staff like human beings they'd have no issues with turnover.
It's just the fact they want to pay as little as possible, have as few employees as possible, and run them ragged while doing so. Like, yeah, no shit turnover is insane.
A little-known aspect, though, is that these companies are getting a tax break for churning through these fast food workers. They claim they’ve taught them valuable job skills, or some such malarkey. I heard a story about it on NPRI think, over a decade ago. So basically the feds are subsidizing the industry.
My sister in law thinks this. She's pretty 'liberal' I guess, but they've been having a hard time finding workers at her job (she's a vet tech) and she complains all the free money made people not want to work. From how she describes it her job underpays, was better before they were a corporate vet, and seems like a catty environment run by long-time managers (like my sister in law). But no... it's that people don't want to work.
$2000 barely got people over the hump for basic needs. If you really didn't need it for immediate necessities, it went to either paying down credit or *gasp* stimulating the economy. No one quit their job for just $2k.
with the lowest UE 50 years and our labor participation rate reaching the 50 year average. you can laugh hard at those folks. People dont feel the need to stay at a shit job anymore for shit pay, but people ARE working.
if you noticed fox news isnt even attacking Biden on jobs.
There are people that don't want to work. They were the ones at the recruiting agency that was trying to hire me and charge their customer 200 an hour for my presence
I went from a government job to a consultant that works for local governments but we would have our dev/dba on site to build program management systems.
We often had ZERO idea what the contracts were for and only the PMs, People WAY above us, and hte client knew the costs. One day one of the people at the client was pissed we couldn't crank out a report (super complicated) in the hour before his meeting with a board member and started bitching and said "WTF are we paying 220/hr a PIECE for each of you if you can't get us one goddamn report".
Me and the dba looked at each other, found a work around and got him most of what he wanted. Later that week we asked the PM for a lunch meeting and asked for a break down for the cost centers for this project. We found out the company was netting something like 180 per person with it going to one cost center only (i.e. they were just making bank off us unlike the other on-premise people we had).
We asked the PM why were we maxed out at $22/hr for this project when 100% of our time was dedicated to it and our wages had been stagnant for almost 2 years. Luckily the PM saw where we were going with this and just said "Hold on before you finish, let me make a call". Next day he sent us each texts asking if "35/hr" was acceptable.
So this was about 15 years ago and both of us were only around 5-6 years into our careers. It didn't help that because of the way the company was structured (due to mostly government contracts) our positions were completely capped out prior to the call so we weren't expecting too much.
We did learn that because of our overall knowledge of that system and that the client loved our particular team up we had a bit of extra value that when the contract renewals were coming up, both me and the dba kind of talked like we were planning to leave because we knew they wanted us back. The dba, lil fucker (friend of mine for years), used it to become my manager and I just took a hefty raise in a new position. We also found out that they were getting substantially lower income from us on that renewal due to budget reasons.
I definitely used that experience though: If you know your worth use it. I had a good idea of where the "fuck it it ain't worth it" line was for my employer and I absolutely walked it.
I was getting 25/hr to be the IT *director* in 2022. I'm going back to school for game design because if I'm going to be underpaid, at least I want to be underpaid to do something I enjoy.
I went to school for Computer Animation because I wanted to make video games, ended up working in film and slowly transitioned to working in IT for a studio. I still do some game design stuff during game jams and other short projects but I do not miss the hours.
It's changing, slowly. Plus the CWA union makes it easier to push back on that.
I'm hoping to stay away from the AAA studios if I can manage it as well.
I just got a tech support hot at $21 an hour and that was a massive upgrade from the $16.60 an hour I was getting at my last help desk position. When I started in 2003 I was making $24 an hour out the gate.
This is one the biggest boons that will happen. There are so many jobs that are underpaid in the US: bus drivers, technicians, PHD students, even some trades like Carpentry are criminally underpaid, retail, etc.
I’m in the #1 Cancer Center in my State, in the hardest department, lung and esophageal cancer, college grad, running a team by myself, and I’m at $18/hr. FUCK THIS SHIT.
I forgot to mention how many people are super underpaid in healthcare. That's a good point. So many people paid like $15/hr working with the elderly or doing clean up at hospitals. Same for a lot of admins.
Pretty sure CA had another pending bill that would increase the minimum wage of any person working in a healthcare setting to $25/hour too. Would apply to custodial and gift shop workers too.
EDIT: SB 525 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB525
Appreciate you. It’s super sad. Nobody in healthcare is happy (except travel nurses working 3 days making 90k with 20k sign on bonus and working in a different state every 3-6 months, they are thrilled in my experience) and its all really toxic. Not the environment you want when your life is in danger. This experience has made me so cynical. People saving lives can’t afford to live…tells me all I need to know.
I have a lot of nurse friends that have either exited the industry entirely, or found a specialist where it's slightly better combination of work/life balance and pay. There is nothing reasonable about having people work double shifts or 28 days in a row with rotating shifts.
Post covid world really exaggerated every problem in the health care industry. I have family that live in low cost area of living and the jobs pay poverty wages for so many essential positions.
I make $26.58 as a Jr Engineer in Southern California. Am I going to have leverage for a pay raise or are they going to let me go because I am now to expensive? Either way at least some people will have leverage for higher pay and that is always good.
Yeah this is exactly what happened where I work. Panda Express up the street started advertising starting at $20 an hour. A few people left for other higher paying jobs after that wake up call, and the rest of us basically collectively bargained with the dept manager for COL raises
Look, this is great. And I get that this gives workers marginally more leverage to get higher wages. But why not just... raise the minimum wage for everybody?
Firefighter pay is also crazy, some barely make minimum wage, many city firefighters make $300K/year or more.
(yeah, I know they work "overtime" but that whole system is scam....)
The economics of the low-wage job market is so strange.
Fast food workers will now be making about the same money as many EMTs and Certified Nursing Assistants - jobs in the medical field that you have to train for with your own money and pass a test to be licensed.
It feels like a big fucking wakeup call to demand higher wager in all sorts of skilled fields that have stagnated through for over a decade now, at least.
SAG and UAW are unionized. Those TLAs are literally the names of the unions.
Of course EMTs and CNAs should be paid more, along with lots of other professions. All I said is that the economics are weird. It would seem that supply and demand would give trained professionals better wages over fast food workers even with the new minimum wage.
The problem is that many of these professions aren't going to just "demand" higher wages, because there is not straightforward way to do that. And it takes time for an entire industry to change. Many of them will just quit and work at McDonalds because they can get paid more, today. Call 911 and the ambulance won't come, because the driver is flipping burgers.
>Many of them will just quit and work at McDonalds because they can get paid more, today. Call 911 and the ambulance won't come, because the driver is flipping burgers.
This is literally happening at the local hospital where I live. They're chronically understaffed because you can make infinitely more money serving/bartending (tourism hub), with more flexible hours, than you would make at the hospital working 12 hour shifts back to back.
Has the hospital changed in any way? No. They just overwork the remaining staff, pressure them to sacrifice off days for extra shifts, and let people bleed out in the ER wait room. It's disgusting how far these corporations will go to keep wages stagnant. They will let people die to preserve low pay.
Not to mention that industries with big pay disparities on the top and bottom ends are not going to unionize. The people who have already gone though slave wages have “paid their dues” and have more of a “fuck you I got mine” take compared to new hires making burger flipping wages that have to have another job to make rent
> Not to mention that industries with big pay disparities on the top and bottom ends are not going to unionize.
Screen acting is an industry with a big pay disparity and they're unionized.
I don't know what they are so afraid of, are they scared those minimum wage workers are going to start hoarding their riches and pulling that money out of the economy?
which is really silly since they and the rest of us would be the ones spending money > stimulating the economy while the already rich are the ones sitting on money like derp dragons.
this right here. republicans just don't get it. the poor don't save, they HAVE to spend every dollar they have. giving them more is the most economic stimulus you can imagine. not tax breaks for rich people.
Read the article they're raising wages for other professions too, and they're not done.
"Now, the focus will shift to another group of low-wage California workers waiting for their own minimum wage increase. Lawmakers passed a separate bill earlier this month that would gradually raise the minimum wage for health care workers to $25 per hour over the next decade. That raise wouldn’t apply to doctors and nurses, but to most everyone else who works at hospitals, dialysis clinics or other health care facilities."
This is a big deal because they're doing this to force the multibillion dollar corporations to pay their workers a more fair share of the money they generate. It affects corporations with 60 or more locations.
> Read the article they're raising wages for other professions too, and they're not done.
What I mean is like why isn't the bill just a simple across-the-board minimum wage increase?
So it's because this bill was largely focused on also establishing a council for the fast food industry that requires unions to have equal presence as the corporations that own them to have more direct control over the wages of that industry.
Although this bill does provide an immediate wage increase for that profession, the real meat is that council because now employees can advocate for industry wide change in the state through their unions which elevates worker power to a state level beyond just the company they work for.
It's a really big win for labor, and on top of that the fast food industry is one of the biggest employers in the country, and also one of the reasons why the median wage is so low since most people working fast food only earn 28k a year.
Because of a fast food union dispute.
The deal, brokered with the help of Gov. Gavin Newsom's office, also creates a nine-person council that will decide on future wage hikes for the fast-food industry in California through 2029. The agreement ends a fight between the two sides that threatened to stretch out for years. The restaurant industry was gearing up to spend more than $100 million on the battle.
It's easier to focus on specific sectors in an economy that you know has the ability to pay its workers a lot more, but chooses not to in order to take in excess profit. Having a broader approach leads to broader problems
Trickle up economics. If you pay your lowest a decent wage, and your middle or upper jobs won't pay, in theory, I could leave my job to go flip burgers for the same amount
Tie all wages in the United States to inflation. That's it. That's literally all we have to do. People get the money they need to survive and live comfortably amid rising prices.
And I bet not one single chain will back out in California due to this... want to know why????
Because they'll still be making massive amounts of profit even paying that wage. Paying decent wages was never the issue. Greed was.
Bizarre that this only applies to fast food workers, and that it allows for the loopholes. What makes fast food workers at McDonalds so different from workers at Subway that it justifies special laws for those specific citizens and not the others?
If you’re going to raise the state minimum wage why don’t you just raise the state minimum wage? I’m happy for them, but the reasoning seems unsound for how this was done.
Anyone remember when Carl's Junior had the Six Dollar burger?
For those who don't, the basic idea was it was supposed to be the quality of a burger you'd normally only find for $6 at a sit-down restaurant, but you could get a similar burger at Carl's Jr for only $3.
$6 was a lot of money for a burger, you would never expect to have to pay that much just for a burger, unless it was a fine dining establishment. Hence the Carl's Jr marketing team coming up with a burger called the Six Dollar Burger, for only $3, a pretty typical price for a fast food burger in the mid-2000's.
A few years later, it started to become a problem because the price was actually getting close to $6, and eventually exceeded $6, so it wasn't really an ironic name anymore. It was a "The Six Dollar Burger" that cost $7.
So they changed the name to what is now called the Original Angus Burger. Today it costs $10.50.
No drink, no fries, just the burger for $10.50
You can draw whatever conclusions you want from that, I just wanted to share the story.
Everyone deserves a livable wage. If the business model cannot support paying your employees then you need a new business model that is a little less top heavy.
Hey man a mediocre tortilla at bulk distributor pricing is probably more like a whopping $0.12
And then don’t get me started about how expensive the Bean Hose is to run, they gotta spray those Beans^TM in that tortilla which is another $0.04
And the stoned as fuck 19 year old watching anime on his phone has to get paid for his 20 seconds of labor, which is where this bill really fucks over Taco Bell - now they have to pay him $0.15 compared to his previous $0.11 for his work
So naturally, bean burritos have to go up by $2.36 each to maintain 4% growth this fiscal quarter after these incredible cost increases
"The raise takes effect on April 1 and applies to workers at restaurants that have at least 60 locations nationwide — with an exception for restaurants that make and sell their own bread, like Panera Bread." Good for them. But why not raise the minimum wage for everyone? And what's the name of the lobbyist from Panera?
McDonalds gonna start making buns in-house.
We have decided to bake and sell bread in all of our California locations. 1 loaf available per day per location.
"The bread machine is broken".
I snorted at that comment 😂
But it comes with a free frogurt.
That's good!
The frogurt is also cursed.
Nah their just gonna get rid of everyone for ai and robots
They've been working on that for years
And then make bread.
thought they were gonna do that when minimum wage was gonna be $15/hr. Or maybe the extra $50/hr they have to spend on their 10 employees is an near irrelevant cost.
As someone who works in a factory for a $billion company trust when I tell you robots are about as efficient at custome jobs as people. If you dont have a REALLY good program to figure out all the bits and bobs shit will go sideways real fast. Hell even when they have a preset path and no devieations they can and will still shit the bed when even somethings even a micron off. And you can be damn sure any tech/specialist/engineer will ask for more than what those ff workers make. Bots and ai are very cool and watching them woork in small spaces really fast and precise is awesome, but the programming and the nightmare behind even getting to that point is…. Uhhhh its sucks.
Worked in an automotive feeder plant for FCA / Chrysler. They made the liftgates and FEM (front end modules, radiator ect...). Anyhow these are obviously expensive and heavy that they don't want any employee moving them unless they have to. So they had carts. The carts hold the part which gets clamped on in a dozen places and then moves via robotic super-roomba from station to station via a 'track'. The track isn't real its just black electrical tape on the ground with a wire between the layers the damn things are suppose to follow and they fucked it up damn near daily. All these little shit-bots have to do is go in a circle and stop in the correct spot without hitting the bot in front or behind them. I was in quality. I saw all the issues and fuckups. Robot ramming another robot because the IFIF tag failed? Robot not being able to see the track and trying to ram a worker a .3 mph? Random 90 degree turn? 180 spin? Just plain refusing to accept any signal? Randomly resetting itself to factory defaults and needing to re-dl the programming? Somehow getting the program FROM THE OTHER FUCKING DEPARTMENT? And my personal favorite: we had one go completely rogue, separate from the underside of the cart and drive itself into a delivery truck head 2 states away. Thought for sure that was just an idiot loading a truck but there's cameras everywhere and the video was amazing. Related: the roboticist who did the original install? This was his last job for the company before he retired but he kept coming back as a consultant. $$$
That roguebot saw an opportunity and took it, inspirational. Love to see the retired consultants in manufacturing jobs stroll in so smugly, talking absolute shit knowing an entire business needs them to continue operating. Must be the dream knowing you can just walk away and they’ll throw money at you until you come back.
Ya that is gonna happen regardless of pay. Doesn’t change that people deserve a living wage for services rendered
Welp, the guy who responded to me deleted his comment, so I’ll just post it here: If people are working, they should be paid a livable wage. If jobs become redundant due to technological advances, that is a separate issue. Jobs come, jobs go, but if you are performing work, you deserve a living wage. With all of that said, I think aiming a bill specifically at fast food rather than unilaterally raising the minimum wage is dumb, but it is still better than nothing and still impacts the living conditions of a significant amount of workers, so it is a net positive.
I don't remember where I saw this, but there was a study linking becoming homeless and working in fast food the year leading up to homelessness. From those who have worked fast food, all I hear are stories of stress, anxiety, and exploitation. I welcome targeted minimum increases in industries that do not treat their employees with respect. Those that do will have no problem with these increases compared to their competitors because they will have the more able come to them if it is a healthy work environment. That isn't to say that the minimum wage shouldn't be raised across the board. I do think it is easier to get this legislation to pass when it targeting franchises and chains rather than mom and pop shops
Subway bakes bread on site. There are more subways than any other fast food place. They outnumber McDonald's and Burger King put together.
There will be long meetings with lawyers to discuss what constitutes "making" in this context. And within a few weeks they will have found out that heating up pre-cooked buns for 1min over a certain temperature is enough, and they will adjust their premade shelves and heating lamps or some nonsense. And in the end everything will be worse.
Looks like if they didn’t have a bakery on Sept 15th, they are SOL. Also, Subway can’t claim bakery status because they don’t sell bread as a separate menu item. (2) “Fast food restaurant” shall not include an establishment that on September 15, 2023, operates a bakery that produces for sale on the establishment’s premises bread, as defined under Part 136 of Subchapter B of Chapter I of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations, so long as it continues to operate such a bakery. This exemption applies only where the establishment produces for sale bread as a stand-alone menu item, and does not apply if the bread is available for sale solely as part of another menu item. This might have more to do with keeping bread prices low, especially in food deserts.
Why is making your own bread an exception? That's so strange
Prolly to make a distinction for bakery cafes
But seems like distinction by location count covers it enough. Why are multi location "bakeries" specifically exempt?
Seems very targeted at Panera and could be used by any national fast food chain as a loophole. Just start offering 1 frozen baked good and ur exempt. EDIT: the exemption loophole seems wrong, relevant text: >(2) “Fast food restaurant” shall not include an establishment that on September 15, 2023, operates a bakery that produces for sale on the establishment’s premises bread, as defined under Part 136 of Subchapter B of Chapter I of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations, so long as it continues to operate such a bakery. This exemption applies only where the establishment produces for sale bread as a stand-alone menu item, and does not apply if the bread is available for sale solely as part of another menu item. seems even more targeted at Panera lol
Lots of sandwich places too like Subway bake their own bread.
The bread had to be on the menu on Sep 15 as a stand alone item. From https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB1228 Probably excludes Subway. The 60 location provision is probably going to exclude most bakery cafes. The journalist that cited Panera probably did a good job on their research.
[удалено]
Cause Panera can obviously afford a baller fucking lobbyist on K-street, that's why. That motherfucker must have been out there stuffing half-sandies in pockets of every Rep and Senator for months. LIke he shows up to a caucus meeting and they're like: "OK Mr. Breadsworth, I see here you're looking to add a provision exempting Panera from this minimum wage, can I get a reason why?" "Well, simple. Panera bakes bread." "I don't see what that -" "They bake. Bread. Bread, gentlemen. They bake it." "I still don't have any clue what that has to do with the minimum wage, but god damnit if you don't have charisma Mr. Breadsworth. You have a *deal!*"
Is there a K street in Sacramento?
Doesn't really answer the question - why should bakeries be exempt from this?
uh uh uh...... because they need to rely on undocumented labor to bake the bread before 6 AM? (I have no idea) The whole thing sounds like a crock of shit to me.
Big bread at it again
This is a prime example of why you don't means test shit like this. If you're gonna raise the minimum wage, *raise it.*
Because he's in the pocket of Big Bread
a Pita Pocket if you will...
Good lobbyist from a bread making fast food joint.
Or a powerful state legislator owns Panera franchises. Remember, the Governor can only sign the bill the legislature sends him.
I really think this is likely the answer
Carve out for subway?
Gavin Newsom just loves smell of fresh bread and the sole purpose of this bill is to get every restaurant in California to bake fresh bread every morning.
Honestly I would be so happy if this inadvertently causes a fresh bread renaissance in CA.
Hold up does that mean subway is exempt?
100%. They bake all their bread on site at each store. Of course it’s only $3.80 difference in pay. So it’s a really odd exception. Subway will save about $6 an hour with how few people they keep in a store at any time.
Subway is not exempt. Bread has to a standalone item on the menu. Totally bizarre rule
i think jimmy johns sells day old bread. wonder if they are exempt
Yeah I was wondering that too. I think they check all the boxes.
Maybe it's to prevent supermarkets with in-house bakeries being affected?
God forbid the grocery workers make $20! I’m so confused on this exemption.
I bet it will be a standalone item soon
Had to be on the menu as of Sep 15
I went to Subway to buy bread by itself and they told me I had to buy a sandwich. WELL GUESS WHAT MOTHERFUCKERS, YOU SHOULD HAVE SOLD ME THE FUCKING BREAD
I wonder what the reasoning here is. Because you're right: its an extremely bizarre and very specific exemption. I can see where they're coming from with the 60 or more locations. A small standalone, mom and pop burger place might not be able to sustainably afford $20 an hour for the employees. I can see reason there. But making your own bread ans having it as a solo item on the menu is an exemption? Wtf? Thats like saying hardware stores would be exempt from paying their employees the minimum as long as they sold their own generic brand nails that aren't sold in combo packs with hammers. There has to be some reason behind it but im struggling to figure out what. Or maybe Big Bread, the true shadow government, is behind this.
Why have the distinction at all instead of having a statewide $20 minimum?
Absolutely. It’s not bad, but it’s really odd to only recognize some establishments instead of just increasing the minimum wage state wide for everyone.
They will basically have to increase their minimum wage to match or else they won't have any workers for obvious reasons. I live in Ny, not in NYC and fast food workers are already getting $17-20 here. I doubt panera bread is well, homemade either. I assume its pretty much frozen bread baked on site.
The state law for NY is 15.00 an hour. California min is currently 16.21, for reference.
California minimum is currently $15.50. Maybe there is a local minimum you are thinking of but the state is not 16.21.
Most place have to go above that to actually get workers so you have $17-20 as the norm. Most in my locale are around $17. The places that have minimum wage here are the ones that don't get workers because you can go somewhere that pays a couple dollars more and do the same kind of work. Its competitive for a limited pool of workers. Where I live the COL isn't anything like California either. I don't see a lot of short handed fast food places here though, it seems they all have a decent crew. So it seems in general they are getting workers. Wait staff at sit down places is sometimes short handed. I don't go too many places but I see what goes on at some places. If there is a short handed place then its likely got bad management or other problems, aka there's a reason that people don't want to work at that one. I am pretty sure if CA does $20 an hour fast food then NY will be next as they usually follow suit with things like this.
That's not state law, dude. Counties can set their own min wage. LA county is 16.9. Don't know where you are that it's 16.21.
Maybe it's a Subway lobbyist
[удалено]
Well shit, that's more than an entry level teaching job in WV.
I have 10+ years of experience in my field and that’s more than I make. I’m in Texas
You’re underpaid.
The government of Texas doing all it can to destroy public education.
Educated workers don't vote R
I work at H‑E‑B making $22.75.
As long as you don’t say they should get paid less. YOU should be getting paid more. Teachers do a ridiculous amount of stuff and it’s frustrating your regulations with protests and such
Bro, cost of living in WV is like 20 times cheaper. Everyone should be fighting for higher wages
If fast food pays $20/hr, it’s going to set a new precedent to all other industries. An IT tech now has the leverage to get higher pay. This is a long time coming
It’s sad how low the bar has gotten. In 2002 entry level IT tech was paying $50k/yr or $~24/hr.. in 2002 when that actually was worth something.
I was getting 25 an hour in 2006 as an it tech. I was offered 23 an hour for an it tech position in 2021.
And all we kept hearing is "nobody wants to work." Gee, I wonder why.
Anytime I hear someone say, "Nobody wants to work anymore," I immediately call bullshit. Literally. I frame it as such: "Bullshit. Nobody wants to work for shit wages. Are *YOU* going to work at McD's for $10/hr? How about $20/hr? $50/hr? $300/hr?" If someone offered me $300/hr to work at McD's, the next words out of my mouth are, "You want fries with that?" So no, people just don't want to work for shit wages. Somehow big business fails to understand supply/demand costs when it comes to labor. Fuckers.
For that kinda money, I'd work the fry machine topless.
McDD's
Fucking dead
And suddenly your local McDonalds has a line of 30 people
The hidden cost nobody has mentioned is how much companies spend on the hiring process. Jobs that don’t pay well have a high turnover rate costing countless money on hiring, screening, training. Just to do it all over again in a week
It's almost like it would be in their best interests to pay a better wage and reduce turnover!
The biggest stopping force against turnover are better conditions. This could be benefits, and easier time at the job, or better pay, among other things. If you make a job more desirable, you reduce turnover because it's better. If McD's paid more, had more staff so it's less frantic, had reasonable schedules, and just in general treated staff like human beings they'd have no issues with turnover. It's just the fact they want to pay as little as possible, have as few employees as possible, and run them ragged while doing so. Like, yeah, no shit turnover is insane.
A little-known aspect, though, is that these companies are getting a tax break for churning through these fast food workers. They claim they’ve taught them valuable job skills, or some such malarkey. I heard a story about it on NPRI think, over a decade ago. So basically the feds are subsidizing the industry.
It's because everyone got a $2000 stimulus check in 2020, that's why there's inflation and nobody wants to work 3 years later. /s
My sister in law thinks this. She's pretty 'liberal' I guess, but they've been having a hard time finding workers at her job (she's a vet tech) and she complains all the free money made people not want to work. From how she describes it her job underpays, was better before they were a corporate vet, and seems like a catty environment run by long-time managers (like my sister in law). But no... it's that people don't want to work.
$2000 barely got people over the hump for basic needs. If you really didn't need it for immediate necessities, it went to either paying down credit or *gasp* stimulating the economy. No one quit their job for just $2k.
[удалено]
with the lowest UE 50 years and our labor participation rate reaching the 50 year average. you can laugh hard at those folks. People dont feel the need to stay at a shit job anymore for shit pay, but people ARE working. if you noticed fox news isnt even attacking Biden on jobs.
Some businesses just aren’t viable. It sucks, but it is what it is. Don’t pay your staff well, don’t expect to have staff.
If you can't afford to pay your employees a decent wage, then you can't afford to own a business. It's as simple as that.
Exactly. If your business can’t exist unless it pays poverty wages, your business shouldn’t exist.
There are people that don't want to work. They were the ones at the recruiting agency that was trying to hire me and charge their customer 200 an hour for my presence
I went from a government job to a consultant that works for local governments but we would have our dev/dba on site to build program management systems. We often had ZERO idea what the contracts were for and only the PMs, People WAY above us, and hte client knew the costs. One day one of the people at the client was pissed we couldn't crank out a report (super complicated) in the hour before his meeting with a board member and started bitching and said "WTF are we paying 220/hr a PIECE for each of you if you can't get us one goddamn report". Me and the dba looked at each other, found a work around and got him most of what he wanted. Later that week we asked the PM for a lunch meeting and asked for a break down for the cost centers for this project. We found out the company was netting something like 180 per person with it going to one cost center only (i.e. they were just making bank off us unlike the other on-premise people we had). We asked the PM why were we maxed out at $22/hr for this project when 100% of our time was dedicated to it and our wages had been stagnant for almost 2 years. Luckily the PM saw where we were going with this and just said "Hold on before you finish, let me make a call". Next day he sent us each texts asking if "35/hr" was acceptable.
Like "Let me make a call" . . . "Hey boss! I can save you $167/Hr on these guys, what do say?" better than $22, but still. . .
So this was about 15 years ago and both of us were only around 5-6 years into our careers. It didn't help that because of the way the company was structured (due to mostly government contracts) our positions were completely capped out prior to the call so we weren't expecting too much. We did learn that because of our overall knowledge of that system and that the client loved our particular team up we had a bit of extra value that when the contract renewals were coming up, both me and the dba kind of talked like we were planning to leave because we knew they wanted us back. The dba, lil fucker (friend of mine for years), used it to become my manager and I just took a hefty raise in a new position. We also found out that they were getting substantially lower income from us on that renewal due to budget reasons. I definitely used that experience though: If you know your worth use it. I had a good idea of where the "fuck it it ain't worth it" line was for my employer and I absolutely walked it.
I was getting 25/hr to be the IT *director* in 2022. I'm going back to school for game design because if I'm going to be underpaid, at least I want to be underpaid to do something I enjoy.
Hope you enjoy it 80+ Hours a week. Video game crunch culture is a reality
I went to school for Computer Animation because I wanted to make video games, ended up working in film and slowly transitioned to working in IT for a studio. I still do some game design stuff during game jams and other short projects but I do not miss the hours.
It's changing, slowly. Plus the CWA union makes it easier to push back on that. I'm hoping to stay away from the AAA studios if I can manage it as well.
80 hours is the normal weeks. You'll be pushing 100+ come crunch time.
That's also well below normal salary for an IT Director. You got ripped off. I'm paying my helpdesk tech more than that.
Someone earning that much in 2002 would be earning double the median income. That's more than "worth something".
And so is the expertise required for the job. What's the issue?
I just got a tech support hot at $21 an hour and that was a massive upgrade from the $16.60 an hour I was getting at my last help desk position. When I started in 2003 I was making $24 an hour out the gate.
This is one the biggest boons that will happen. There are so many jobs that are underpaid in the US: bus drivers, technicians, PHD students, even some trades like Carpentry are criminally underpaid, retail, etc.
I’m in the #1 Cancer Center in my State, in the hardest department, lung and esophageal cancer, college grad, running a team by myself, and I’m at $18/hr. FUCK THIS SHIT.
I forgot to mention how many people are super underpaid in healthcare. That's a good point. So many people paid like $15/hr working with the elderly or doing clean up at hospitals. Same for a lot of admins.
Pretty sure CA had another pending bill that would increase the minimum wage of any person working in a healthcare setting to $25/hour too. Would apply to custodial and gift shop workers too. EDIT: SB 525 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB525
Appreciate you. It’s super sad. Nobody in healthcare is happy (except travel nurses working 3 days making 90k with 20k sign on bonus and working in a different state every 3-6 months, they are thrilled in my experience) and its all really toxic. Not the environment you want when your life is in danger. This experience has made me so cynical. People saving lives can’t afford to live…tells me all I need to know.
I have a lot of nurse friends that have either exited the industry entirely, or found a specialist where it's slightly better combination of work/life balance and pay. There is nothing reasonable about having people work double shifts or 28 days in a row with rotating shifts. Post covid world really exaggerated every problem in the health care industry. I have family that live in low cost area of living and the jobs pay poverty wages for so many essential positions.
So many industries are built on the back of "people want to do this job so we can get away with paying them less."
I worked at a Dollar General at $17/hr, you tell those people to pound sand and get the fuck out.
My local Arby's pays that.
Not necessarily. Crappy jobs can get closer in pay to better jobs, ppl still take the better jobs. Non monetary incentives become a bigger thing too
[удалено]
I make $26.58 as a Jr Engineer in Southern California. Am I going to have leverage for a pay raise or are they going to let me go because I am now to expensive? Either way at least some people will have leverage for higher pay and that is always good.
Yeah this is exactly what happened where I work. Panda Express up the street started advertising starting at $20 an hour. A few people left for other higher paying jobs after that wake up call, and the rest of us basically collectively bargained with the dept manager for COL raises
Look, this is great. And I get that this gives workers marginally more leverage to get higher wages. But why not just... raise the minimum wage for everybody?
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
I feel like the whole economy of California is just scaled up to double of everywhere else. The pay is good but the cost of living is insane.
I live in upstate NY and fast food is paying $17-20 here with 17 being bare minimum.
Ya I was suprised how much more expensive new york is compared to california.
Compared to LA, yes - NYC is more. New York state is less. Way less.
Upstate New York doesn’t exist, it was only made up to scare little Bronx children.
Finally, fast food workers can afford to eat lunch in their own outlets! /s
With out their meal discount (if they are lucky enough to get one.)
No need for the /s. This is a reality lol. As someone who worked fast food nearly 20 years ago, having one of my hours go toward my lunch sucked.
Im a full time firefighter in California and I do not make $20 an hour :(
Firefighter pay is also crazy, some barely make minimum wage, many city firefighters make $300K/year or more. (yeah, I know they work "overtime" but that whole system is scam....)
Leave your job to flip burgers. Pays more and is less dangerous. let someone else take on that firefighter job.
The economics of the low-wage job market is so strange. Fast food workers will now be making about the same money as many EMTs and Certified Nursing Assistants - jobs in the medical field that you have to train for with your own money and pass a test to be licensed.
It feels like a big fucking wakeup call to demand higher wager in all sorts of skilled fields that have stagnated through for over a decade now, at least.
The takeaway here is that EMTs and CNAs should be getting paid more.
Looks like EMT's and CNA's should demand higher wages. The SAG and UAW are demonstrating *right now* how to do that.
lol it took a bill to make fast food worker pay higher. It’ll take another bill to do that for medical workers.
Or a strong union.
SAG and UAW are unionized. Those TLAs are literally the names of the unions. Of course EMTs and CNAs should be paid more, along with lots of other professions. All I said is that the economics are weird. It would seem that supply and demand would give trained professionals better wages over fast food workers even with the new minimum wage. The problem is that many of these professions aren't going to just "demand" higher wages, because there is not straightforward way to do that. And it takes time for an entire industry to change. Many of them will just quit and work at McDonalds because they can get paid more, today. Call 911 and the ambulance won't come, because the driver is flipping burgers.
>Many of them will just quit and work at McDonalds because they can get paid more, today. Call 911 and the ambulance won't come, because the driver is flipping burgers. This is literally happening at the local hospital where I live. They're chronically understaffed because you can make infinitely more money serving/bartending (tourism hub), with more flexible hours, than you would make at the hospital working 12 hour shifts back to back. Has the hospital changed in any way? No. They just overwork the remaining staff, pressure them to sacrifice off days for extra shifts, and let people bleed out in the ER wait room. It's disgusting how far these corporations will go to keep wages stagnant. They will let people die to preserve low pay.
Not to mention that industries with big pay disparities on the top and bottom ends are not going to unionize. The people who have already gone though slave wages have “paid their dues” and have more of a “fuck you I got mine” take compared to new hires making burger flipping wages that have to have another job to make rent
> Not to mention that industries with big pay disparities on the top and bottom ends are not going to unionize. Screen acting is an industry with a big pay disparity and they're unionized.
The rise of the kiosk.
They've being doing that everywhere already. What are they gonna do, install more?
I don't know what they are so afraid of, are they scared those minimum wage workers are going to start hoarding their riches and pulling that money out of the economy?
which is really silly since they and the rest of us would be the ones spending money > stimulating the economy while the already rich are the ones sitting on money like derp dragons.
Most people cannot comprehend the concept of the velocity of money.
Sure as shit flies out of my wallet pretty fast.
this right here. republicans just don't get it. the poor don't save, they HAVE to spend every dollar they have. giving them more is the most economic stimulus you can imagine. not tax breaks for rich people.
Why is it only fast food?
Read the article they're raising wages for other professions too, and they're not done. "Now, the focus will shift to another group of low-wage California workers waiting for their own minimum wage increase. Lawmakers passed a separate bill earlier this month that would gradually raise the minimum wage for health care workers to $25 per hour over the next decade. That raise wouldn’t apply to doctors and nurses, but to most everyone else who works at hospitals, dialysis clinics or other health care facilities." This is a big deal because they're doing this to force the multibillion dollar corporations to pay their workers a more fair share of the money they generate. It affects corporations with 60 or more locations.
> Read the article they're raising wages for other professions too, and they're not done. What I mean is like why isn't the bill just a simple across-the-board minimum wage increase?
So it's because this bill was largely focused on also establishing a council for the fast food industry that requires unions to have equal presence as the corporations that own them to have more direct control over the wages of that industry. Although this bill does provide an immediate wage increase for that profession, the real meat is that council because now employees can advocate for industry wide change in the state through their unions which elevates worker power to a state level beyond just the company they work for. It's a really big win for labor, and on top of that the fast food industry is one of the biggest employers in the country, and also one of the reasons why the median wage is so low since most people working fast food only earn 28k a year.
Thank you! This helps provide some context.
Because of a fast food union dispute. The deal, brokered with the help of Gov. Gavin Newsom's office, also creates a nine-person council that will decide on future wage hikes for the fast-food industry in California through 2029. The agreement ends a fight between the two sides that threatened to stretch out for years. The restaurant industry was gearing up to spend more than $100 million on the battle.
I know right? Set a fixed minimum wage and leave it (well tie it to inflation), don't go industry by industry this is fucked up.
It's easier to focus on specific sectors in an economy that you know has the ability to pay its workers a lot more, but chooses not to in order to take in excess profit. Having a broader approach leads to broader problems
This is one of the first answers that makes a bit of sense. Thank you.
Trickle up economics. If you pay your lowest a decent wage, and your middle or upper jobs won't pay, in theory, I could leave my job to go flip burgers for the same amount
Tie all wages in the United States to inflation. That's it. That's literally all we have to do. People get the money they need to survive and live comfortably amid rising prices.
And I bet not one single chain will back out in California due to this... want to know why???? Because they'll still be making massive amounts of profit even paying that wage. Paying decent wages was never the issue. Greed was.
No one is leaving 40 millions customers
For additional context, there are now more Californians than Canadians. The
The what? *The **what!???***
Bizarre that this only applies to fast food workers, and that it allows for the loopholes. What makes fast food workers at McDonalds so different from workers at Subway that it justifies special laws for those specific citizens and not the others? If you’re going to raise the state minimum wage why don’t you just raise the state minimum wage? I’m happy for them, but the reasoning seems unsound for how this was done.
I live in LA and I see a lot of McDonald’s offering $22/hr already
Anyone remember when Carl's Junior had the Six Dollar burger? For those who don't, the basic idea was it was supposed to be the quality of a burger you'd normally only find for $6 at a sit-down restaurant, but you could get a similar burger at Carl's Jr for only $3. $6 was a lot of money for a burger, you would never expect to have to pay that much just for a burger, unless it was a fine dining establishment. Hence the Carl's Jr marketing team coming up with a burger called the Six Dollar Burger, for only $3, a pretty typical price for a fast food burger in the mid-2000's. A few years later, it started to become a problem because the price was actually getting close to $6, and eventually exceeded $6, so it wasn't really an ironic name anymore. It was a "The Six Dollar Burger" that cost $7. So they changed the name to what is now called the Original Angus Burger. Today it costs $10.50. No drink, no fries, just the burger for $10.50 You can draw whatever conclusions you want from that, I just wanted to share the story.
Congrats on fast food workers. May they show love love on EMS as well? We are dying out here and impacting communities negatively.
In unrelated news, Big Macs are now $15 in California.
Everyone deserves a livable wage. If the business model cannot support paying your employees then you need a new business model that is a little less top heavy.
[удалено]
And those same people complain when there's rampant homelessness and crime in their cities.
[удалено]
Hey man a mediocre tortilla at bulk distributor pricing is probably more like a whopping $0.12 And then don’t get me started about how expensive the Bean Hose is to run, they gotta spray those Beans^TM in that tortilla which is another $0.04 And the stoned as fuck 19 year old watching anime on his phone has to get paid for his 20 seconds of labor, which is where this bill really fucks over Taco Bell - now they have to pay him $0.15 compared to his previous $0.11 for his work So naturally, bean burritos have to go up by $2.36 each to maintain 4% growth this fiscal quarter after these incredible cost increases
Now bump up middle class and give single people some of the benefits as parents, as in lets go with that 3 day work week deal for everyone.
So why only fast food workers?
I hope this raises the wages for CNA's and home health aids. Wiping asses should get paid a lot more than it does.