AB 257 to flatline local fast food joints?

Reason’s J.D. Tuccille discusses California’s AB 257 (chaptered in early Sept.) and its promises to champion local workers through a statewide Fast Food Council. As extant minimum wage directives have exemplified, mandating restaurants’ working conditions may harm business, workers, and customers alike.

Why start your own business when you can tell other people how to run their operations without doing any of the work or assuming the risk yourself? That's the apparent theory behind California's A.B. 257, a bill just passed by legislators that would establish a council with the power to set wages and working conditions for fast food restaurants. It's a measure likely to kill jobs, guaranteed to cause headaches for business owners, and that will probably prove a boon for the automation industry as well as for fans of failed experiments in 20th century authoritarian government….

As that analysis suggests, the push in recent years for higher minimum wages has already spurred restaurant chains, including McDonald's, to adopt self-service kiosks for ordering and robots for food preparation. The provisions of A.B. 257 can only make flesh-and-blood employees that much more expensive and uncompetitive.

Even government officials aren't all enthused by the legislation's vision of corporative decision-making for the fast-food industry. California's own Department of Finance opposes the bill because of the high costs and regulatory fragmentation it poses. Gov. Gavin Newsom has yet to indicate whether he'll sign the measure.

As it stands, California already offers a difficult environment for businesses to navigate, with a significant existing regulatory apparatus and a high minimum wage.

This article originally appeared in Reason. Read the whole thing here.

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Image by Judy Baxter