Why Restaurant Workers Can’t Win
A Powerful Lobby Made Californians Pay for Food Safety Training—Then Spent the Money Fighting Against Raising the Minimum Wage
The story of California’s minimum wage laws is often told as a story of progress. As of January 1, 2023, the state holds the third highest minimum wage in the country. All employees, including tipped workers whom most states exclude, make $15.50 per hour here. But such a narrative obscures the ways that low-wage workers are still being taken advantage of. Like how, for over a decade, California has required millions of its low-wage workers to pay for lobbying to suppress the wages of their fellow workers nationwide—without knowing it.
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