California’s Fast Food Council, comprised of fast-food workers, restaurant owners and state officials, approved a motion Wednesday to consider a cost-of-living-adjustment at an upcoming meeting.

The Council’s next meeting, expected to take place in April or May, will be for further discussion and not see a vote taken on a decision about it.

Before the vote, the Council heard scores of public comments.

Business owners said not enough time has passed since the $20 minimum wage went into effect to study the effects, which they say has already led to higher consumer prices and less jobs for workers.

Workers and labor advocates said the increase was needed to address rising costs of living in one of the country’s most expensive states to live.

Veronica Gonzales, a fast-food worker, spoke remotely from a room full of workers organized under the California Fast Food Workers Union’s San Jose chapter. Through a translator, she said in Spanish that the cost of her rent and her medicine has gone up.

“I cannot live with this wage,” she said.

The possibility of a wage increase, which would be the first for the Council since the state created it last year alongside the $20 fast-food minimum wage, has become a flashpoint in a growing debate about California’s unique effort to regulate the fast-food industry.

California is home to more than half a million fast-food workers, more than any other U.S. state.

California’s law empowers the Council to regulate fast-food restaurants that are part of chains with more than 60 locations nationwide, including wage increases every year of either 3.5% or the increase in the consumer price index, whichever is smaller.

When the California legislature first approved a fast-food-specific minimum wage in 2022, McDonald’s USA President Joe Erlinger objected to what he called in a letter on its website “lopsided” legislation.

A McDonald’s spokeswoman said that Erlinger’s letter was clear that he “welcomes legislation that increases wages for all workers, as long as it is done thoughtfully and fairly.”

In the letter, Erlinger said the legislation would impose “higher costs on one type of restaurant” — those franchisees that are part of a large national chain– “while sparing another” — independent restaurants and franchisees of smaller chains as well as certain restaurants that bake bread.

Erlinger also said the bill “should raise alarm bells across the country” because it had the potential to influence other states into making similar laws.

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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 up with rent, our bills and the rising cost of living.”

The minimum wage for fast-food workers at larger chains was agreed last September and increased to $20 an hour on 1 April, but numerous reports have already been made that the wage hike is resulting in job losses and price increases for customers.

The decision by two Pizza Hut franchises in California to lay off more than 1,000 delivery driver employees and rely on gig delivery drivers instead has been cited in claims that the minimum wage rise will result in layoffs and job losses.

“The reality is that delivery drivers have become more numerous in the last couple years because of Covid,” said Michael Reich, UC Berkeley chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. “The pizza companies have been moving to make their delivery drivers not employees but instead rely on these delivery services for quite some time. And I think Pizza Hut is going to make this change anyway.”

Reich also argued that previous research had found employment increases as a result of higher minimum wage, lowers turnover rates for businesses, and makes it easier to recruit and retain employees.

The research is unlikely to deter attacks.

A group representing fast-food franchise owners poured more than half a million dollars into political donations for ads opposing elected officials who helped craft and pass the legislation. A Wall Street Journal op-ed referred to the California wage increase as “crazy” for paying “burger flippers” $20 an hour. The New York Post claimed Los Angeles fast-food chains increased prices on 1 April in response to the law, including citing price increases at the actor Kevin Hart’s chain Hart House, which doesn’t have enough locations to be subjected to the new law, which stipulates the chains must have at least 60 restaurants nationwide.

A McDonald’s franchise owner of 21 locations complained to a local Los Angeles news outlet that they could not “raise prices enough”. McDonald’s and Chipotle blamed the wage increase for anticipated price hikes in California ahead of the wage increase taking effect. El Pollo Loco claimed it would be looking into automation to cut labor costs due to the law.

The Center for Union Facts, a non-profit founded by a Washington lobbyist, Rick Berman, who 60 Minutes referred to as “Dr Evil” for his tactics in advocating for business interests, is running television advertisements in California claiming the wage increase is a “wrecking ball” for the fast-food industry.

But researchers have long criticized these claims of causation which have frequently been made in response to minimum wage increases around the US, all of which have come at the state level because Washington has failed to act on raising the federal minimum wage from the $7.25 an hour minimum last passed in 2009.

“Overall, study after study shows that increases to the minimum wage actually have a net gain. They produce a stimulus effect. If you give poor people more money, they’re going to spend it locally, including on rent, utilities and housing. It doesn’t get much more local than that, and that increased spending actually produces jobs,” said Tia Koonse, legal and policy research manager at the UCLA Labor Center.

An analysis of financial data over the past decade by researchers at the Roosevelt Institute found the fast-food industry has more than enough profits to raise wages without affecting prices and employment and have been hiking prices far beyond their operating costs for years.

“In 2023 alone, the 10 largest publicly traded fast-food companies spent $6.1bn on share repurchases,” noted the report. “As with most industries, the fast-food industry has historically charged higher prices than their marginal costs. However, between 2014 and 2023, markups increased at an annual rate of 2.2%, faster than at any period since 1978.”

Ali Bustamante, author of the report and deputy director of worker power and economic security at the Roosevelt Institute, added: “There’s really an opportunity here to revert profits back into workers back into the source of productivity for these businesses in a way that is going to be beneficial, not just for the overall economy, but certainly for these businesses in the long term.”

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These CEOs are not skimping and scraping by. We should be asking why they’re not cutting back on these exorbitant bonuses to help pay their workers a livable wage instead of passing the buck to customers or threatening to cut staff.

Sulymon Siddiq, Riverside

..

To the editor: Have any of you been in a grocery store lately? And I am not talking about Erewhon. Just your run-of-the-mill Vons or Stater Bros.

It’s negligent — even for researchers — to continue talking about grocery stores having “affordable” healthy food options. They don’t.

You can ask a few dozen of your friends who are lucky enough to make a high salary and live where there are a lot of grocers nearby, and most of them will tell you that shopping for groceries — healthy or not — is not “affordable” anymore.

Big-box grocers are inflating prices to keep their profits soaring. The idea that a supermarket is where you go for healthy, affordable food is fast becoming a myth.

Lynn Balsamo, Santa Monica

..

To the editor: Fast-food workers earn every penny of their new $20 minimum wage. Their wages go right back into our economy to provide food, housing and healthcare to many of our most vulnerable neighbors.

The rising tide lifts all boats.

Justin Massey, Hermosa Beach

The writer is mayor of Hermosa Beach.

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WASHINGTON — The Office of Personnel Management will now pay all federal workers a minimum of at least $15 per hour.

OPM’s guidance[CS1]  directs agencies on adjusting pay rates for General Schedule and Federal Wage System employees stationed in the U.S and how to use administrative authority for other pay systems, with implementation of the changes by Jan. 30.

In total, this impacts 67,000 out of 2.2 million federal employees. During his first week in office, President Biden signed an Executive Order on Protecting the Federal Workforce directing OPM’s leadership to provide him a report with recommendations to promote a $15 per hour minimum wage for the federal workforce. That report was submitted to the White House and the issued guidance reflects the report’s findings.

The Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense and Agriculture collectively employ most of the personnel who are currently paid an hourly rate below $15. Many of the employees who will benefit from this wage increase have been on the front lines throughout the pandemic, working resiliently to serve the American public.

“Of the nearly 67,000 affected federal employees, 9,700 are from the Department of Veterans Affairs,” said VA Secretary Denis McDonough. “How we treat our workforce directly impacts their morale and success — and increasing pay rates to at least $15 per hour is a necessary step to achieve these goals. Some of these affected individuals are VA food service workers and housekeeping aides.”

VA housekeeping staff support the department’s mission to help Veterans improve their health quicker by keeping facilities clean and safe, which are essential to the patient care experience.

VA’s food service workers are also essential to patient care as they deliver excellent dining that nourishes the Veterans they serve. Safety, sanitation and quality, along with customer service are paramount in the Veterans Health Administration’s health care systems.

OPM’s memorandum[CS2]  to department and agency heads outlines guidance for implementing the pay rate adjustments.

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The Soboba Casino Resort has been able to recruit and retain successful employees since it first opened its doors in 2019 even amid the mandatory shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A recent shortage of workers at all types of businesses throughout the country led SCR management to make the decision to raise its minimum wage to $17 for its hourly employees.

“The labor market in Southern California has become very competitive, and we recognize the difficulties many of our team members face with rising inflation and the cost of living in general. We very much wanted to both be competitive and provide a living wage for our team members,” SCR Human Resources Director Gloria Baron said.

Of its current 1,275 team members, a total of 1,038 will be affected by the wage increase. Not every department includes team members at minimum wage but this increase does still impact a large percentage of team members.

“Our goal is to have over 1,400 employees when fully staffed,” Baron said. “We are looking to fill approximately 300 open positions in several different departments. Open positions can be found on our website at www.soboba.com/careers.”

Rene Alvarez is a recruiter for SCR and has created partnerships with many entities to let potential employees know about the opportunities that are available to them. Aside from local community colleges and county agencies, such as the Department of Public Social Services, America’s Job Center of California and the Veterans Administration in Loma Linda also maintain strong relationships with Alvarez.

SCR has always kept pace with the current California minimum wage and will continue to keep doing so. The starting rates for part- and full-time employees in many positions are the same. However, in addition to the $17 per hour wage, full-time workers receive additional benefits such as medical, dental, vision and basic life insurance, a 401K plan with up to a 5% match, various discounts, an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), a generous Paid Time Off allowance and more.

“Like almost every business across the country, Soboba Casino Resort has been affected by the labor shortage,” Baron said. “Many of our open positions are in Food and Beverage.”

Robert Mejia, Director of Food and Beverage, said that in the hospitality industry, every day is unique and dynamic. “You must be willing to adapt and adjust your plans, as each day brings different challenges and opportunities,” he said. “Team members and management need guidance, however, it is imperative that despite titles or positions, collaboration and communication is key. I have always found that to be effective as a leader, you need to listen.”

He said what he finds most rewarding about his job is that he has the opportunity to instill change, whether it’s positive financial success, improving the guest experience or offering suggestions that impact a department.

“In my opinion, the hospitality industry is the toughest industry in the market. Finding the balance between effectiveness and sustainability in a fast-changing industry drives me to continue to maintain collaboration with my team. Providing a vision that is consistent across multiple types of service avenues is key to success,” Mejia said. “Welcoming team members is vitally important to development, retention and overall department growth and success. Within my department, the success of a new team member starts day one.”

A department trainer helps with the transition for new employees. Understanding their position and providing the service training and expectations gives them the opportunity to have the confidence to be successful. Mejia said, “Training, communication and ensuring they understand their role helps new team members ease the strain of the unknown. In my position, I make it a daily habit to walk my areas multiple times a day to just say hello. When I recognize new team members, I take the time to introduce myself and ask if there is anything I can help them with and I encourage my management team to do the same. The willingness to listen, regardless of reason or conversation, shows that I/we care.”

He said that employee engagement is and will always be what he asks of himself and his management team. “From day one to the entirety of a team member’s time within the department, we will engage, coach and mentor to foster growth,” Mejia said.

SCR has also been able to maintain a high level of customer service, while limiting the strain on its current team members by concentrating labor into its most popular food venues and into key areas on its gaming floor. This enables the customer experience to remain at the high level that SCR has become known for since it opened in March 2019.

As Director of Hotel Operations, Michelle Woodfin said that her department is always looking for individuals that are driven and open to learning new skills.

“We strive to find the perfect position for each applicant based on their experience and interests. More than anything, if an applicant has heart and a desire to work hard, we are willing to teach them the skills they need to not only perform their duties, but to also grow within the company,” she said. “When all new hires are introduced to their department trainers, they are provided an on-boarding guide to introduce them to the property, the hotel and their department. It is a tool they can use to reference when performing their duties in the future and to provide a written media for learning. We understand that everyone learns in different ways, and it is important to provide training in a written, visual and hands-on manner to help guide them through their new role.”

She said applicants are not expected to be an expert in the field of their position. Some individuals that have strong retail or customer service skills may not have ever worked in the hospitality field but can be shown how to adapt their past experience to their current position.

“We will teach them the operations and more importantly, the ‘why’ behind the reasons we do the things we do,” Woodfin said. “We also work very closely with our Training Department to look for classes in our Casino Essentials to help our team members grow in their roles or prepare for positions they aspire to learn. When we receive a new team member, it is important that they feel welcomed and supported in their new role.”

Woodfin attends orientations to introduce herself to all new team members and provide them with information. She also regularly makes herself available to answer any questions they may have regarding Hotel Operations or the property as a whole.

“The part of my job that I love the most is when I see a team member grow within our company,” she said. “Many people apply for a position with the intent of moving up within the company and it makes me so happy to train, mentor and nurture someone that is passionate about hospitality. Seeing a team member take the skills we have provided them and put them in action to promote to a supervisor or management role makes me proud. To know that we helped them to achieve their goal is a truly great feeling.”

Assistant General Manager Jason Cozart, who is also a Soboba tribal member, said, “The Soboba Casino Resort and the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians has always been committed to taking care of our valued team members and being good members of the surrounding community, in the San Jacinto Valley and beyond. The positive changes we are implementing will go to support both of those goals by providing a living wage to our team members and creating even more jobs right here at home. I am proud of the steps we as an organization and a Tribe have taken in an effort to strengthen this community.”

Several department specific hiring events are scheduled from 1 to 3 p.m. on the following dates: Jan. 26, Feb. 9 and 23, and March 3 and 24. A Job Fair to recruit for all open positions is planned for April 14 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Additionally, hiring events will be held at America’s Job Center of California’s Riverside location at 1325 Spruce St. from 9 a.m. to noon on Feb. 1 and 15 and March 8 and 15.

Further details are available at www.facebook.com/JoinTeamSoboba. For individuals interested in applying for any open position, please visit www.soboba.com/careers, email recruitment@soboba.com or contact the staffing team at 951-282-0986.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The signs and banners are dotted along suburban commercial strips and hanging in shop windows and restaurants, evidence of a new desperation among America’s service-industry employers: “Now Hiring, $15 an hour.”

It is hardly the official federal minimum wage — at $7.25, that level hasn’t been raised since 2009 — but for many lower-skilled workers, $15 an hour has increasingly become a reality.

Businesses, particularly in the restaurant, retail and travel industries, have been offering a $15 wage to try to fill enough jobs to meet surging demand from consumers, millions of whom are now spending freely after a year in lockdown. And many of the unemployed, buoyed by stimulus checks and expanded jobless aid, feel able to hold out for higher pay.

The change since the pandemic has been swift. For years, and notably in the 2020 presidential race, labor advocates had trumpeted $15 an hour as a wage that would finally allow low-paid workers to afford basic necessities and narrow inequality. It struck many as a long-term goal.

Now, many staffing companies say $15 an hour is the level that many businesses must pay to fill their jobs.

“That number is not a coincidence,” said Aaron Sojourner, an economist at the University of Minnesota. “It’s the number that those activists and workers put on the table 10 years ago, and built a movement towards.”

Even so, millions of Americans are still earning less than $15 an hour. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculates that even by 2025, roughly 17 million workers will remain below that level.

Yet at ZipRecruiter, the number of job postings on the site that are advertising $15 an hour has more than doubled since 2019, said Julia Pollak, labor economist for the company. The proportion of jobs that offer 401(k) retirement accounts, flexible scheduling, signing bonuses and other benefits has risen, too.

The beneficiaries are people like Maggie Himmel, who started working at the Flowers for Dreams flower shop in Milwaukee last fall for $12.50 an hour. In January, the company raised its minimum wage to $15.

The higher pay allowed Himmel, 22, to move into her own apartment after sharing living space with her sister. She is earning more than she did before the pandemic, when she worked part time at a flower shop in Kalamazoo, Michigan, for about $11 an hour.

“Moving out on my own was a huge goal for me,” she said. “I was so happy to get that news.”

Steven Dyme, the owner of Flowers for Dreams, said the $15 minimum made it much easier for him to staff up once the economy reopened this spring and demand for flowers, particularly for weddings, soared.

Dyme, whose company has four locations — one in Chicago, one in Milwaukee and two in Detroit — says he’s fully staffed, with 80 full- and part-time workers.

At $15 an hour, he said, “I saw a markedly different picture in how fast we could recruit and in the experience level of workers.”

Mathieu Stevenson, the CEO of Snagajob, a site for hourly workers, says a handful of restaurant chains are going so far as to offer retirement plans — he calls it the “white collarization” of blue collar jobs — as benefits once reserved for professionals are being offered to some service workers.

“The $15 an hour debate,” Stevenson said, “is essentially being resolved through market forces.”

Yet other trends have also helped drive the movement toward a $15 wage. The Fight for $15 labor movement has organized strikes by fast food workers and has lobbied states and cities for higher minimum wages. Thirty states and the District of Columbia have adopted wage floors that exceed the $7.25 federal minimum. Eleven states have passed laws that will lift their minimum wages to $15 over time. Among them is Florida, where voters last year approved a measure raising the minimum to $15 by 2026.

Other states on track to a $15 an hour wage floor include California, Illinois, New York and Virginia. Ben Zipperer, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, estimates that four in 10 workers live in states where the minimum is set to reach $15 in the coming years.

The National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for low-income workers, calculates that 26 million people, or about 16% of workers, have received higher pay because of all the state and local minimum wage increases since 2012, though often to less than $15 an hour.

The increases have disproportionately benefited Black and Hispanic workers, the report found. Historically, higher minimum wages have been found to reduce racial wage gaps.

The $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage has now gone the longest stretch without an increase since it was first introduced in July 2009. Labor Department data showed that last year, only about 250,000 people — fewer than 0.5% of all workers — earned that wage.

Many employers are having to pay more to keep up with larger companies, including Amazon, Costco and Target, that have announced their own pay raises to $15 or more. More recently, Under Armour, Southwest Airlines and Best Buy have adopted $15 wage floors.

Economic research has found that when a large company raises pay, nearby employers feel compelled to follow suit. A study led by Ellora Derenoncourt, a Princeton University economist, found that companies in local markets that compete with Amazon, Target or Walmart generally responded by matching their wage hikes dollar-for-dollar. Derenoncourt’s research also found that when companies seek to match the pay offered by their large competitors, they often end up employing fewer people, though the impact is relatively small.

Some economists argue that a federal minimum wage increase to $15 an hour — more than double the current minimum — will cost jobs. The CBO, in its most recent assessment, said that it would mean 1.4 million fewer jobs by 2025. Yet the CBO also found that as many as 27 million people would receive pay increases.

One factor that’s helping fuel higher wages is a change in outlook among many lower-paid workers, millions of whom were laid off when COVID-19 first erupted in the spring of 2020. Some who worked at grocery stores, restaurants or hotels now don’t want to return to those jobs — at least at the same pay.

And three rounds of stimulus checks, plus a $300-a-week federal unemployment benefit, have made it easier for them to turn down jobs that don’t pay enough. Pollak, at ZipRecruiter, notes that with the extra unemployment benefit, jobless aid on average pays about $625 a week — equivalent to about $15 an hour.

That’s likely a big reason why a March survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that workers without a college degree have raised the minimum pay they expect from a job by a whopping 26% from a year earlier.

Economists are uncertain whether or how long hefty pay gains will last. But many predict that when the $300 federal benefit for the unemployed expires in September, schools reopen, and more mothers return to work with their children in school full time, the influx of workers will make it easier to hire and reduce the pressure on employers to raise wages.

Nebraska is among the states that have stopped paying the $300 benefit and has reinstated requirements that jobless people document that they are searching for work. Greg Sulentic, who owns an Express Employment staffing agency franchise in Lincoln, Nebraska, said those steps have attracted more job-seekers but have hardly been a panacea. In the offices he oversees, there are still 1,300 jobs to be filled.

Sulentic said pay rates have jumped since the pandemic, with workers that made $10 to $11 an hour last year now getting $15 or $16.

“We’ve seen wage growth like we’ve never before seen in this industry, and I’ve been doing this for 25 years,” he said.

Some employers, he said, have been reluctant to increase pay, but “it’s been very difficult for those companies to hire on and retain employees.”

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