Gov. Gavin Newsom said the hike was necessary to give the state's more than half a million fast food workers a living wage.
Jaimie DingThe effort to boost the minimum wage for California fast food workers and health care workers is seeing mixed results and reactions.Lawrence Cheng, whose family owns seven Wendy's locations south of Los Angeles, took orders at the register on a recent day and emptied steaming hot baskets of French fries and chicken nuggets, salting them with a flourish.
Experts say it's still too early to tell the long-term impact of the wage hike on fast food restaurants and whether there will be widespread layoffs and closures. Past wage increases have not necessarily led to job losses. When California and New York nearly doubled their minimum wage previously to $15 compared to the federal level of $7.25 per hour, job growth continued, according to a University of California, Berkeley study.
But many major fast food chain operators say they are cutting hours and raising prices to stay in business. Since their core business is lunch, Chacon has been reducing staffing in the mornings and evenings. He's also cut a few part-time employees, going from 165 total to about 145. "When labor costs jump more than 25% overnight, any restaurant business with already-thin margins will be forced to reduce expenses elsewhere," Condie said. "They don't have a lot of options beyond increasing prices, reducing hours of operation, or scaling back the size of their workforce."
"Today was payday and I bought $500 worth of stock," said Lewis. He's also helping his ex-wife fix the brakes on her car.
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