Newsom caught with hand in cookie jar again, exempts more 'friends' from $20/hour fast-food wage law
Not too long ago, Gavin Newsom got caught with his hand in the cookie jar of political cronyism.
In response to a draconian law passed raising fast-food worker wages to $20 an hour, known as A.B. 1228, Newsom carved out a little exemption for his friends at Panera Bread on the laughable grounds that these establishments bake bread on the premises. In reality, the owner of several Panera establishments was a high school buddy who was a really good donor to his campaigns.
Once caught, Newsom backed off, but right when he thought no one was looking, he went right back to the cookie jar again to carve out more little exemptions for his friends who donated well, as if word had gotten around, signing off on a "cleaned-up" bill known as A.B. 610.
According to the California Globe:
California Governor Gavin Newsom just signed Assembly Bill 610 into law, which is the “clean up bill” granting exemptions for the $20 fast food minimum wage for fast food restaurants. Because as the Globe reported, Newsom’s PaneraGate scandal is admission that California’s arbitrary minimum wage laws hurt all businesses, but especially small to medium sized businesses.
It’s pretty clear now that the sole purpose of the law, given the specific exempted restaurants, is all part of the destruction of the middle class.
The bill language says: “This bill would exempt additional restaurants from the definition of “fast food restaurant,” including such restaurants in airports, hotels, event centers, theme parks, museums, and certain other locations.”
AB 610 will exempt fast food restaurants in airports, hotels, event centers, theme parks, museums, gambling establishments, corporate campus cafeterias, and Publicly owned lands including ports, piers, beaches and parks concessions – not just from the $20 an hour minimum wage starting April 2024, but also from regulation by Gov. Newsom’s creepy new Fast Food Council, which the Globe has reported on as government expansion and control.
So now casinos, airports, museums, theme parks, corporate cafeterias and the like which sell fast food are specially exempt from that draconian minimum wage that is crushing California's businesses. The big corporate company that can bring in a fast-food establishment for its employees as a perk can pay a sub-minimum wage law, but the little guy who sells tacos from a truck, or the struggling franchise owner in the inner city has to pay his employees full fare, driving up his entire operational cost.
The Globe notes that as a result of this lunatic law, which goes into effect April 1, businesses are fleeing the state, and hiring fewer workers. Some are automating services. What's more, fast-food employment has already dropped about 1.3% since the start of this punitive cost hike on fast-food establishments, significantly higher than the 0.2% job losses overall in the private sector in the state, with the Globe citing a report from the Wall Street Journal as its source.
If saving cronies is the aim here, as Newsom demonstrated with his exemptions, why not save all businesses instead? Do airport and casino fast food workers not need their "dignified" wages as much as other fast food workers? Why should they be making less?
Even more important, why should fast-food workers be making $20 an hour? Why not cleaning ladies, why not dog walkers, too? Normally, a high wage corresponds to a higher value in work, but this turns that idea onto its head, and ends up making everyone poorer, including those who really do have $20/an hour skills, because job formation no longer happens.
The clowns in Sacramento are all about push-pull influence-peddling, particularly for unions. This measure is toxic, not just for its arbitrary higher costs on business, but because corruption has become a part of it. Like the old Soviet Nomenklatura, we are starting to see a nomenklatura form in California where socialism and the state have become ever bigger and more obtrusive. Every last socialist hellhole has a nomenklatura where the rich live the lives of idle rich while the poor get ever poorer in the name of 'equality.' It's disgusting stuff, and Gavin Newsom is advancing that model right along in California.
Image: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED
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