California fast food council stalls, leaving workers without leadership

California’s first-in-the-nation fast-food council was supposed to give workers a formal seat at the table on wages, safety and working conditions. Instead, the chair seat is vacant, the full council has gone more than a year without meeting, and the shop-floor problems that sent the policy fight into the Legislature are still being handled one store at a time.

The stakes are practical, not symbolic. The council was created by AB 1228, signed by Gavin Newsom on September 28, 2023, and set up inside the California Department of Industrial Relations. When it took effect on April 1, 2024, it established a $20 hourly minimum wage for qualifying fast-food workers at chains with 60 or more locations nationwide. It also gave the council authority to recommend annual wage increases and set standards on health, safety and working conditions. Without a functioning chair, that mechanism sits idle, leaving staffing, scheduling, pay and safety disputes without the structured forum workers were promised.

Newsom appointed Nicholas Hardeman as the council’s first chair on March 1, 2024, but that seat is now vacant and no replacement has been named. State meeting records show only limited activity in early 2025, including a February subcommittee meeting and an April council notice and recording, while the full council has not been meeting regularly. The council is scheduled to exist until January 1, 2029 unless the Legislature renews it, which makes the current stall more than a temporary delay. It is a breakdown in the very process meant to keep fast-food labor standards moving.

The council’s membership was designed to balance labor, industry and public voices. Current members listed by the state include Michaela Mendelsohn, Anneisha Williams, Joe Johal, SG Ellison, Richard Reinis, Angelica Hernandez, Maria Maldonado and Joseph Bryant, along with nonvoting representatives from GO-Biz and the Department of Industrial Relations. That mix matters because the point of the council was to resolve disputes inside a formal bargaining structure instead of pushing every fight back into the Legislature or the courts.

Worker advocates tied to the SEIU-affiliated California Fast Food Workers Union are pressing Newsom to appoint a new chair so the council can resume its work. Luna Mondragon, a worker who described aches and pains on the job and retaliation in the form of fewer shifts after speaking up, put the problem plainly: “If we don’t have our health we can’t accomplish anything,” and “We need the council.” For fast-food workers from Sacramento to South Fresno, the message is the same: a wage victory only goes so far if the table built to protect it stops meeting.