On a sunny SoCal Tuesday, Fast Food workers marched down the traffic filled streets to strike and demand in defense of their right to meet their employers at the negotiation table to resolve labor disputes. November 15 brought out a day of protest and striking among the Fast-Food workers unions against the political campaign their employer corporations are organizing to confuse public constituents from voting in favor of the AB 257 law.
Earlier this year, Governor Newsom signed into “law AB 257, also known as the FAST Recovery Act, which will establish a Fast-Food Council to negotiate industry-wide standards for wages and working conditions.” This right to enter the principal nodes of institutional authority would facilitate Fast Food workers to push for an increase in minimum wage, as high as $22 in the first year, with small annual increases after that; along with passing “laws modifying or rejecting the standards put forth by the council, but if the legislature does not intervene, those standards become state law.” (KNOCK LA)
“The council will consist of two fast food workers, two labor advocates, two franchisors, two franchisees, and one representative each from the Department of Industrial Relations and the Office of Business and Economic Development.”
Although the corporations have lobbied away “extended joint liability, meaning that large corporations would have faced accountability for the actions of their franchises”, the workers continue unrelentingly to leverage their demand to keep the law in place. Anyone and everyone who can vote should understand this law more, it's not in our collective interest as community members to let Fast Food workers lose their negotiation opportunity. Consider how the economy could be if more workers learn to stand up and organize with the state?
Without solidarity, the corporations will continue to encroach on our rights and livelihoods, from the K3 buildings coercing tenants to evict, to the workers in Amazon warehouses being put through social conditioning classes to cultivate distrust against union organizing, everywhere we see a struggle between the increasingly marginalized workers against their corporate managers. For the sake of all, the workers must win. Join the fight, start by voting for AB 257 law!