It’s been four months since the minimum wage for California fast-food workers rose to $20 an hour from $16 — a big win for organized labor.
Now the California Fast Food Workers Union is saying that salary bump wasn’t enough. It wants a new minimum wage of $20.70 an hour “to keep up with the rising cost of living.”
Points for chutzpah.
While it’s hard to see sufficient political will in Sacramento to support another raise for fast-food workers, this new demand is a sign of an emboldened labor movement.
It shows that the powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which oversees the fast-food union, is flexing its muscles after decades of setbacks for organized labor.
Not that the union doesn’t have a point.
“As California’s fast-food industry grows, cooks and cashiers are doubling down on their fight across the state to win safe and healthy stores, stable hours, pay that keeps up with inflation and training to understand their rights on the job,” SEIU said in a statement.
Even so, business leaders have condemned the recent wage hike for fast-food workers as anti-competitive and a blow to profitability.
State lawmakers may be respectful of the political clout of unions, but they also know better than to throw kerosene on the fires of anti-business sentiment.
So take the demand for another salary boost for fast-food workers — albeit a relatively modest one — with a grain of salt.
Like Dickens’ Oliver Twist, union leaders are saying, “Please, sir, I want some more.”
And like young Oliver, they’ll quickly be shut down.