The Governor’s business wants to pay less than the fast-food minimum wage.
By
The Editorial Board
April 4, 2024 at 5:39 pm ET
California’s new $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast-food restaurants is causing pain for employers and price increases for customers. But how is Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wine restaurant allowed to pay its bus-boys $16 an hour?
Republican Assembly Member Joe Patterson this week tweeted a
ZipRecruiterjob post offering $16 an hour for a part-time “busser” at PlumpJack Cafe near Lake Tahoe. Mr. Newsom founded the PlumpJack Group as a wine shop in 1992. His hospitality business has expanded to include four wineries and four restaurants and bars.
According to the job post, the worker would be required to “prepare coffee, espressos, cappuccinos as directed,” “support the bartenders,” make the “Manager aware of all guest comments and complaints” and “understand and respond to all guest needs and requests in a timely manner.” If only Democratic lawmakers were as responsive to constituents.
The $20 minimum wage, up from the overall state minimum of $16, is already causing fast-food lunch bills to rise by $2 in much of the state. Tech bros in San Francisco might be able to afford an $8 Big Mac, but lower-income folks in Fresno not so much.
Mr. Newsom’s PlumpJack Cafe offers such delights as pickleback chicken wings ($21), r&r meats wagyu angus burger ($28), southern fried game hen ($43), and harris ranch prime ny strip ($67). If a restaurant that charges nearly $70 for a steak doesn’t pay workers more than the state minimum, why should fast-food franchises be forced to?
Mr. Newsom’s office says he put PlumpJack Group into a blind trust after he was elected Governor in 2018 and doesn’t run its restaurants on a daily basis. OK. But the wage contradiction is another illustration of how California’s liberal gentry punish businesses they don’t like and then don’t abide by their own diktats.
California has never fully recovered from Mr. Newsom’s Covid lockdowns, when he was caught dining at Napa Valley’s fancy The French Laundry shortly before he shut down other restaurants. Food services and accommodation jobs are still roughly 25,000 fewer in California than before the pandemic, though there are 31,000 more in Florida and 77,000 more in Texas.
Unemployment in California has climbed to 5.3%, the highest in the country, and is in double digits in much of the rural Central Valley. The state’s new fast-food minimum will be another economic blow—unless, apparently, you are in Gov. Newsom’s wine business.
Source Wall Street Journal
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Author: brianpeckford
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