Fast food workers last week joined the ranks of the hot labor summer, as hundreds of employees at restaurants like McDonald’s and Domino’s hit the picket lines in a day-long strike.
For years, LA’s fast food workers have been organizing to demand better conditions in their industry, where they face some of the lowest wages, toughest working conditions, and highest levels of homelessness of any workers in LA.
Lizzet Aguilar works at a McDonald’s in Boyle Heights, and has been organizing with her co-workers and the Service Employees International Union since 2020. She says she started pushing back against poor working conditions during the pandemic, when many of her coworkers caught COVID after cleaning up restaurants that had outbreaks.
“McDonald's makes millions of dollars. How is it that they can't pay for a professional cleaning company? Instead, they're using us with limited resources to clean the stores and expose ourselves, and not telling us that this is happening,” she says in Spanish. “That's what led me to say … enough is enough. We're not trash. They're treating us like we aren’t important.”
But the fight for fast food workers has been long. Because many of these restaurants are franchises, it can be difficult for workers to get owners to meet their demands, says Catherine Fisk, a labor law professor at UC Berkeley.
“If the franchisee tries to improve wages or improve safety or health protections, the franchisee may be in violation of the franchise agreement, or they may be unable to make money themselves, because the corporations at the top of the hierarchy, in their franchise agreements, suck all the profits out of the restaurants and leave franchisees in a bind,” says Fisk.
That’s what led workers to push for a statewide council that would help regulate the industry by bringing workers and fast food owners to the table together. Last year, Assembly Bill 257, the Fast Recovery Act, was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, but it never went into effect.
That’s because business groups proposed a ballot measure to repeal the legislation, causing it to get hung up in court.
“So still, the workers are waiting to get the ability to actually negotiate wages and compliance with minimum wage law,” says Fisk.
If the ballot fails to pass in 2024, the original law might still go into effect. In the meantime, lawmakers have moved to re-fund and revive the Industrial Welfare Commission, a 1910s-era labor board that could serve a similar purpose in regulating the industry.
Until that happens, Aguilar says that she and other workers will continue to raise their voices, along with the rising tide of other workers that are striking for workplace improvements.
“We should all be heard,” she says. “Maybe we won't all be heard at exactly the same time. But we should all be, we're all essential. And we're all raising our voices.”
