Only a few months into her job as a Burger King worker in Oakland, Alondra Hernandez faced a violent episode at her workplace. Complaining about his order, a Burger King customer hit the protective plexiglass barrier that separated employees from customers with his fist. The acrylic partition shattered. Bits of glass struck the manager’s forehead. Afraid that she would be attacked next, Hernandez considered running. Instead, she rushed to her bleeding coworker, a task never discussed during her training.

Hernandez said that she asked management to hire a security guard but was told that employee hours and salary would be reduced to pay for the guard. “I was afraid of going back,” Hernandez said. “That’s why I decided to ask for help. This is my first time working in fast food. In less than eight weeks of working at this store, I have experienced several instances of violence.”

Hernandez then remembered a labor organizer who had visited the restaurant weeks before the plexiglass incident. The organizer was a member of the Fight for $15 & a Union campaign and spoke about Assembly Bill 257 – the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act, or FAST Recovery Act. The legislation signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom on September 5, 2022, guarantees California fast-food workers the ability to shape industry-wide workplace standards and gives workers the power to hold corporations accountable for sticking to those standards.

The FAST Recovery Act represents the boldest change to fast-food restaurant working conditions in the country. The legislation creates a statewide Fast-Food Sector Council comprising workers, government officials, and industry representatives to set minimum health, safety, and employment standards across the California fast-food industry. If the council agrees that hiring people trained in de-escalation tactics would improve in-store safety, it could issue that recommendation to fast-food corporations. The council also aims to tackle long-standing issues of sexual harassment, discrimination, wage theft, and other kinds of violence in the fast-food industry.

“We want a seat at the table, being able to speak up and have a conversation,” said Hernandez, who currently earns $16.50 an hour at Burger King. “There are people working in these restaurants for ten, fifteen years, and they deserve a dignified retirement. For them, we are going to continue this fight.”

“I try to work hard, but here at McDonald’s, it doesn’t matter if you are the best at what you do, you won’t get a raise,” said Maria, an East Bay McDonald’s worker. “I have to beg for a raise.”

In a possible repeat of 2020’s California Proposition 22, where Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, and Postmates contributed over $240 million into campaigning against pro-worker laws, FAST Recovery Act has been put on hold until the November 2024 election. Backed by McDonald’s, Burger King, Jack in the Box, and other fast-food corporations, opponents gathered more than one million signatures, with 712,000 of those deemed valid, surpassing the 623,000 needed to generate a referendum on the law.

With the future of the FAST Recovery Act in limbo, fast-food workers like Maria remain hopeful that she will eventually earn $22 an hour under the new law. “If they pay me $22 an hour, it will help me to not live under a tight budget anymore,” she said.

In the meantime, she awaits the law’s fate while working under the same conditions that led her to activism. “We will keep fighting until AB 257 becomes a reality,” she continued. “We deserve to be heard.”