On a recent workday, Angelica Hernandez labored in an unbearably hot McDonald’s kitchen in Monterey Park, east of Los Angeles.
“The AC has not been working,” she said through an interpreter. “I leave work with a headache or feeling nauseated.”
Hernandez’s experiences working various shifts for no more than $18.19 an hour the last two decades have included being sexually harassed by a manager and getting cheated out of pay by her boss, she says. She complained publicly last year while campaigning for a worker protection bill, hoping her story would help the law pass. It did: On Labor Day 2022, the governor signed the FAST Recovery Act (Assembly Bill 257), promising new protections and better pay for workers. But victory was short-lived. A coalition of restaurant corporations and industry trade groups gathered enough signatures to challenge the law on the November 2024 ballot, blocking its implementation.
About 15% of fast-food workers live in poverty, twice the rate of the overall workforce.
Now, workers and unions may have found a way around deep-pocketed anti-worker ballot initiatives. A recently revived California commission, dormant for two decades, should provide workers like Hernandez some muscle to combat subpar working conditions in low wage industries. The Industrial Welfare Commission, originally established in 1913 to regulate workplaces that employed women and children, has powers that rattle corporate interests, including issuing wage increases. Lawmakers specifically wanted to ensure that the commission would not stray from its purpose and become a management ally. The bill, AB 102, that provided $3 million in funding for the commission requires that it issue orders that strengthen, as opposed to weaken, labor protections.
That has not sat well with its opponents, including the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Restaurant Association.
Workplace standard setting boards, such as ones in New York, Minnesota, Philadelphia and Seattle, are becoming a way to empower workers by allowing their representatives to negotiate directly with employers. Such boards support employees facing tough union-busting tactics (that are often met with weak penalties) or employed by subcontractors or franchisees, and thus removed from the corporate headquarters where the terms of their jobs — and lives — are dictated. Advocates say workplace standard setting boards could have significant effects across California and the country, enabling a form of industrywide (or “sectoral”) bargaining, which is common in Europe and Australia.
In New York, a revived wage board was responsible for raising fast-food workers’ wages in 2015 to $15 per hour over several years, a key demand of the Service Employees International Union’s Fight for $15 campaign. That win inspired the growing crop of wage boards, said David Madland, a senior fellow at the D.C.-based Center for American Progress. (Disclosure: SEIU is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)
Since 2018, at least nine workplace standard-setting boards (which include wage boards) have been adopted in states and cities across the country, including Michigan, Colorado, Nevada, Detroit and Minnesota, as well as in California. Many are tasked with addressing workplace conditions in specific industries or occupations, such as domestic workers, farm laborers, nursing home workers and home care workers. For employers, wage boards offer potential benefits as well. Bargaining across industry creates a level playing field, allowing companies to compete based on increased productivity rather than by driving down labor costs, Madland said.
“Nobody is proposing a wage board for professional sports, because they have unions and negotiate collectively on behalf of all players with all the employers.”~ Catherine Fisk, professor of law, UC Berkeley
California’s revived Industrial Welfare Commission will prioritize those industries that have 10% or more of their workers living in poverty. About 15% of fast-food workers live in poverty, twice the rate of the overall workforce, according to a 2021 study from the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
The commission’s exclusive focus on low wage industries makes sense because it gives a voice to a group of workers who currently lack one, says Catherine Fisk, a law professor at UC Berkeley.
“Nobody is proposing a wage board for professional sports,” she said, “because they have unions and negotiate collectively on behalf of all players with all the employers.”
There is no guarantee that fast food will be selected as one of the industries targeted by California’s Industrial Welfare Commission, which is expected to include representatives from organized labor, employers and the general public. But it may not be a coincidence that it was revived at this moment in time. The FAST Recovery Act, now on hold, calls for the creation of a fast-food council, a body that bears a strong resemblance to the Industrial Wage Commission. Like the commission, the fast-food council would also include employee and industry representatives.
Matt Haller, president and CEO of the International Franchise Association, has called the revival of the commission “undemocratic” and a “backdoor” way to implement the FAST Recovery Act, before Californians have a chance to vote on it. The revived commission must deliver its recommendations to the state’s labor commissioner before Oct. 31, 2024. That’s just a week before the November election, when voters will determine whether the law is enacted or repealed. The commission is set to convene by Jan. 1.
SEIU, which has been organizing fast-food workers for over a decade, supports the revival of the commission but does not claim any responsibility for its reappearance.
The commission — whose members are appointed by the governor — has not always been supported by labor organizations. In the early 20th century, labor unions opposed the commission’s creation because they feared it would undermine efforts to organize workers, even as it drew support from some businesses of that era. Under Gov. Pete Wilson, the commission rolled back overtime protections in the late 1990s, calling into question its mission. The Legislature eventually defunded the board in 2004. In 2006, it was briefly resurrected under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who attempted to deploy it in a battle over how much to raise the minimum wage.
Over the decades, the commission issued wage orders for 17 industries, including manufacturing, logging, construction and food processing. California Gov. Gray Davis used the commission to raise the state’s minimum wage in 2000.
Hernandez is hopeful.
“Reporters have asked me in the past, if you’re having such bad experiences, why don’t you find another job?” she said. “I tell them, if I go and find another job, the odds are that I would be going through the same thing. I’d rather stay here and keep fighting.”
