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Romualda Alcazar Cruz, 51, prepares sandwiches and hamburgers at a Wendy’s restaurant at International Boulevard in East Oakland. Cruz, who has worked in fast food for seven years, used to win the old minimum wage of $ 16.50 per hour.
That is, until April 2024, when a very suitable California law entered into force that increased the earning floor at $ 20 per hour for workers in 25000 fast food restaurants, including Wendy’s chains, In-N-Out Burger, Chipotle and Starbucks.
A year later, Cruz said she is better able to keep her husband, who live together in an apartment in a room in Oakland.
“It’s a very good leg,” said Cruz, who speaks Spanish, through a translator. “It has helped a lot to cover our invoices, our rent, our groceries.”
In 2022, the International Union of Employees of the California Service initiated an intense campaign to press state legislators to raise the minimum wage in the fast food industry, a sector that considers a legitimate professional career for workers, but one with starting conditions.
The restaurant industry withdrew strongly, arguing that the peak would force the business owners to hemorrhages and increase prices up to 20% for customers who yearn for their fast food solution.
The salary “has only led to restaurant closures, price increases and the loss of thousands of jobs,” said Jot Condie, president of the California Restaurants Association, in a statement, described it as a “Policies-Wrong Policy Experiment.”
In March, the restaurant industry gave data from the US Labor Statistics Office.
“Is it worth the benefit for the pain that is demanded?” Said Christopher Thornberg, economist of the private consulting group Beacon Economics. Thornberg has produced studies paid by the restaurant industry, including the study of 2022 that estimated 20% cost increases driven by higher wages.
“Some people are being helped, those workers who maintain their jobs,” he said.
Michael Reich, economy professor at the Institute for Work and Employment Research at UC Berkeley, does not agree that the policy has promoted important meanings for job losses or price increases and says that it gives workers a very necessary advantage.
“It’s very useful,” he said in an interview. “It has led people to buy a used car or replace a used car. It is a leg show to reduce bankruptcies and increase credit scores.”
She thought that she is inflexible that the salary impulse is not harming business owners, Cruz said she is only doing a little more than it was last year because Heraagers in Wendy’s cut her hours after the minimum wage. The restaurant also increased prices four or five times in the last year, he said. Wendy’s representatives did not comment immediately.
Selvin Martínez, a 30 -year -old employee from the Wienerschnitzel’s hot dog chain in Campbell, said the payment peak is helping him to support his parents and brothers while arriving at the end of the month in South Bay, one of the most expensive real estate markets in the United States, rents a $ 1,000 room per month in San José.
Martínez said that his manager has not reduced his hours or those of his co -workers, or fired from employees. A hot dog chain spokesman did not respond immediately when asked to comment.
“I feel blessed,” said Martínez, who also speaks Spanish, through a translator. “Because now I can pay my bills on time. I finally have savings. And I can also help my family.”
Even with the highest minimum wage, fast food workers such as Martínez are very less than the $ 35 per hour that is the worthy salary for a person without deep in the South Bay, according to a Massusetts or cited Massusetts Institute of Technology.
Joseph Bryant, International Executive Vice President of International Service Employees Union, the salary of $ 20 raises a “vulnerable” workforce that is mainly composed of people of color and a good part of the residents living in the United States with wooden permit. The union restores about 1,000 fast food workers in the state and is pressing to organize more.
“I think there is this false conception of fast food workers that these are high school children who work part -time to earn extra money,” he said. “But you have some people who have legs for decades.”
Bryant brushed the suggestions that the salary increase has some negative impact, nodding other California economists who have reached drastically different conclusions so far. Allhoug Academics are exchanging spikes and throwing doubts about the methods of others, they do agree that the effects of the salary of $ 20 will become clearer in the coming months and years.
The union cites a positive investigation published by the Institute for Research on Work and Employment at UC Berkeley. Reich, the economy professor, said the highest wages have benefited workers without evidence of an inconvenience so far.
In February, Reich published a letter study that found that the salaries had increased around 9 percent among the 400,000 workers covered by politics, citing the data of US labor statistics. UU. Which referred to the publication on the work site at the Glassdoor site.
Meanwhile, prices in thesis restaurants increased by 1.5%, he said, or about six cents in a $ 4 hamburger, according to the study. According to the world population review, the average price of 2025 of a Big Mac in California is the highest ninth of the United States states, at $ 5.89.
In that article and a previous study published in September, Reich said he found no evidence of what he called “magical thinking” in the restaurant industry that contentious policy would increase food prices or stimulate layoffs.
Thornberg, the private consultant, found the opposite in his own letter study of the policy that he published earlier this month, that the restaurant industry groups have cited.
Based on a different data set, of the California Employment Development Department, Thornberg discovered that the California fast food industry lost 23,000 jobs, or 3% of its workforce, while the national industry grew slightly from the past spring.
Thornberg said it is too early to draw conclusions and rebuked the Berkeley work center for “Fist-Bumping Mysage” and calling the increase in the minimum wage “a great victory.” He said he could bring economists up to a year and a half to see the complete effects of politics.
“Stop calling it a victory,” he said. “It’s too soon.”
Reich said he plans to publish another study in the coming months.
