Protecting Franchisees and Workers in Fast Food Work
Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley School of Law
Student at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Class of 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated the tragic consequences of worker maltreatment. The impact on fast work workers has been particularly acute, with line cooks facing a 60 percent increase in mortality associated with the pandemic – the highest of any occupation – and Latino and Latina foodservice workers seeing a 39 percent increase in mortality. With employers unwilling or unable to comply with health and safety standards to prevent the spread of COVID-19, a new ACS Issue Brief by Catherine Fisk, the Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, and Amy Reavis, a third-year law student at UC Berkeley, argues that sectoral bargaining proposals like California’s FAST Recovery Act can help address the healthy, safety, and labor law problems in fast food work by giving workers a voice in setting labor standards.