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California’s not so golden for fast food businesses
July 2024 · Rebekah Paxton · Orange County Register
California’s businesses are hemorrhaging, and the governor is more interested in making himself look good than stopping the bleeding. A first of its kind survey shows most California fast food businesses have been forced to slash employee hours, shut down, or even consider moving out of state. Since Governor Gavin Newsom signed a $20 fast food minimum wage law last fall, businesses and their employees have been… -
Listen to Ohio’s servers – they’re the ones whose jobs are on the line
June 2024 · Rebekah Paxton · Center Square Ohio
Come July 3, thousands of Ohio’s tipped workers could be staring down the barrel of job losses and severe cuts to their take home pay if a measure that would phase out the tip credit and raise the state’s minimum wage makes its way onto Novembers’ ballot. Ohio’s tipped workers aren’t naive. They’ve seen the data and know similar policies have cost jobs and earnings across the… -
Eliminating New York’s tip credit is a terrible idea
March 2024 · Rebekah Paxton · The Buffalo News
Legislation to eliminate the tip credit in New York won’t empower restaurant workers. Special interest groups like One Fair Wage don’t speak for workers, who would suffer the real life consequences of fewer jobs, lower tips, and shuttered workplaces. Tipped restaurant employees earn differently, and far more, than other minimum wage employees. Currently, New York law requires restaurants to pay a $10 base hourly wage upstate ($10.65… -
Misplaced outrage over Panera Bread’s carveout from fast-food law
March 2024 · Michael Saltsman · Orange County Register
In a rare showing of Sacramento bipartisanship, Republicans and Democrats this week were at odds with Governor Gavin Newsom. A report in Bloomberg alleged that a bakery exemption in the state’s forthcoming $20 fast-food wage was inserted to help one of the governor’s campaign donors, a franchisee of Panera Bread. (In separate statements, the Governor and the franchisee denied the allegation.) Republicans responded by calling for investigations;… -
The SEIU’s fake fast food union
February 2024 · Michael Saltsman · Orange County Register
Five years ago, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced an aggressive plan to create “Unions For All.” Today in California, that vision looks exceedingly small. How else to react to the forthcoming statewide launch of a so-called fast food workers’ union? This new entity is not a union in the traditional sense, it has no self-sustaining funding source, and no employer is obligated to bargain with… -
A $15 Minimum Wage in Oklahoma is a Recipe for Disaster
January 2024 · Rebekah Paxton · The Oklahoman
The fate of Oklahoma’s hospitality industry may soon be in the hands of its people. A proposed ballot measure would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, spelling disaster for the state’s businesses and tens of thousands of employees. It could be voted on as soon as November 2024. On its face, this “one size fits all” policy seems like a great solution to combat inflation by putting…