Business groups claim hard-fought $20 hourly wage victory will cause reduced hours, layoffs and price hikes – critics say otherwise

As fast-food workers celebrated a pivotal wage increase to $20 an hour in California last week, an old economic debate was awakened by business groups and others claiming the increase will wind up hurting workers through reduced hours and layoffs, hurt customers with price hikes, and harm the franchise owners of fast food restaurants.

Their critics are not so sure.

The hard-fought wage increase to $20 an hour from California’s current minimum wage, $16 an hour, was a compromise to initial demands of $22 an hour with annual wage increases. Representatives of fast-food workers and the fast food industry came to a deal to avoid what would have been a costly ballot initiative over the passage and signing of the California fast food sector bill last year.

“Frontline workers like me organized, went on strike, and fought to pass a historic law that raises our wages and gives us a seat at table with some of the biggest fast food corporations in the world,” said Anjelica Hernandez, a McDonald’s worker in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years. “Even though we are the engine of a billion-dollar industry, too many of us struggle to keep with rent, our bills and the rising cost of living.”

  • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    just like everything else in the US now there will be a select few states with high pay even at fast food

    meanwhile the same job is only paying $7.25 an hour in other states

    in the US it like a dystopian future that uses a demographic lottery to hand out what rights and pay you will have

    see the US is the greatest country you make a high salary and these citizens will revote these people back in meanwhile their neighbor is making half that and told he should have voted better

    presidents are always supporting states rights over federal even Biden who has lazily left to the states to decide while touting how well their economic policies are doing

    this leaves the citizens even the ones not allowed to vote at fault for their issues and divides the populace against each other