Fast food workers want more job protections. What will LA City Council do about it?

The Los Angeles Metropolis Council voted Wednesday to look into the way it might increase rights on the job for quick meals employees and set up a “Know Your Rights” coaching program for the business.

In 2022, the council passed a law, the Fair Work Week Ordinance, that established protections for employees at giant retail institutions. These protections embody superior discover of scheduled hours; the power to request most well-liked shifts; and precedence for present workers to choose up extra hours earlier than the employer brings on new employees.

The regulation doesn’t apply to quick meals employees. On Wednesday, nonetheless, the Metropolis Council voted to ask for a report on what it might take to increase the regulation to take action.

“That is an business that’s simply rife with wage theft, problems with scheduling, folks dwelling in poverty,” mentioned Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who launched the proposal. “We now have to deal with it. We now have to do one thing.”

How have quick meals jobs modified just lately?

Los Angeles has greater than 2,500 giant chain quick meals eating places, in line with Soto-Martínez’s movement. The council’s vote comes a 12 months after California carried out a $20 minimal wage for quick meals employees throughout the state, and as these employees and their advocates proceed to push for modifications to their circumstances.

A recent report from Rutgers and Northwestern University discovered that 1 in 4 L.A.-area quick meals employees have been paid lower than minimal wage in 2024. A 2023 report from the analysis group Financial Roundtable discovered that one in 17 unhoused folks in California works in quick meals.

At Wednesday’s assembly, a number of quick meals employees spoke throughout public remark in favor of increasing the Truthful Work Week ordinance, together with one employee who mentioned she is homeless.

“I work my butt off to work for a multi-million [dollar] firm… they usually preserve mendacity and saying they cannot afford stuff,” mentioned Anneisha Williams, who works at a Jack within the Field in Hawthorne. “And it is simply not honest for employees like me at the moment that we have now to maintain begging and begging and pleading and pleading simply for easy little issues.”

Franchise house owners and quick meals employers additionally confirmed as much as the assembly to oppose efforts that might result in the regulation’s growth.

“Hours will likely be slashed, entry-level jobs will likely be misplaced,” mentioned one enterprise proprietor who mentioned she ran two quick meals places in Northridge. “Quick meals eating places can not afford any extra expensive mandates. We’re nonetheless fighting the aftermath of the $20 minimal wage.”

What debate is there over value and impression?

The request for a report from the Chief Legislative Analyst is only a step in an extended course of that can require the council to weigh in once more earlier than any modifications happen.

However Metropolis Council members clashed on the assembly over the potential results increasing quick meals employee rights would have on employers and the financial system. Among the arguments mirrored ongoing arguments between labor unions and the quick meals business about how elevating the minimal wage for quick meals employees has affected employment and restaurant costs.

The council narrowly rejected a proposed modification from Councilmember Bob Blumenfield requesting a “detailed financial evaluation” of the proposed suggestions, after Councilmember Soto-Martínez spoke out in opposition to it, saying the burden on metropolis employees would delay motion for months and that town already has sufficient stories.

Blumenfield mentioned he wished to have “eyes vast open” about financial results, “particularly at a time once we are seeing a whole lot of closures of eating places and companies.”

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez proposed a separate modification that might have requested town’s legislative analyst to look into exempting quick meals eating places in meals deserts and areas the the place town has tried to bolster financial growth and healthy food offerings.

“ We’re creating an atmosphere that’s inhospitable to their existence,” Rodriguez mentioned of quick meals companies in these areas.

The council rejected that a part of Rodriguez’s modification. Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson mentioned that many quick meals employees reside within the neighborhoods the place she was searching for exemptions.

“ Meals deserts are, in actual fact, not less than partly precipitated as a result of individuals who reside in these neighborhoods work all day, daily, typically two, three jobs, they usually barely make sufficient to get by,” he mentioned.

What occurs now?

The Metropolis Council did request that the chief legislative analyst search enter from small companies, and to obviously lay out which companies could be included.

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado argued that increasing protections to quick meals employees would create extra stability for employees and their employers in Los Angeles.

“ It is about having higher jobs, higher protections, and higher retention,” Jurado mentioned. “Do we would like low-paying jobs the place there’s a lot turnover that small companies can not survive as a result of they’re all the time chasing a brand new set of employees? No.”