Guest Post by Gabrielle E. Gordon
On Labor Day, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act (FAST Recovery Act), which authorized the California Department of Industrial Relations to create a Fast Food Council with the authority to set standards for wages, safety conditions, security, training, time off, and even protection from harassment and discrimination. We wrote all about it in this Alert.
But the franchise and restaurant industry acted quickly. The day after the FAST Recovery Act was signed into law, a referendum effort was launched in a bid to stay the law. Now, the Save Local Restaurants Coalition, a coalition of restaurant owners and operators, has collected enough signatures to qualify FAST Recovery Act for the November 2024 ballot. Once the California Secretary of State verifies that the requisite number of signatures has been collected, the implementation of the law will be stayed until California voters have the opportunity to decide the fate of FAST Recovery Act in November 2024.
Fast Food restaurant franchisors and franchisees can rejoice for the holidays; at least for now, there is not a lump of coal in their stockings.
This lightly edited post first appeared on the Fox Rothschild California Employment Law blog.