Restaurant workers at a Foster’s Freeze location in California arrived at work this week to find they had lost their jobs because it had closed, thanks to a $20 minimum wage signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) that took effect April 1.
Local ABC affiliate KFSN 30 reported:
Monday, as California’s minimum wage for fast food workers rose to $20 an hour, the Foster’s Freeze in Lemoore permanently closed.
The assistant general manager, Monica Navarro, told Action News it was because of the wage increase, saying the owner told her he could not afford the new salaries.
Some of the employees thought it was an April Fool’s Day joke.
As Breitbart News reported last month, citing the Wall Street Journal, many California restaurants had already begun to lay off workers in anticipation of the mandatory wage hike:
California restaurants are laying off workers ahead of a new $20-per-hour minimum wage law taking effect in the fast food industry in April…
As Breitbart News has reported, California is set to raise the minimum wage by 25 percent to $20 per hour, effective April 1, under a law, AB 1228, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in 2023.
…
Though economists have debated whether raising the minimum wage hurts or helps workers, one area where the negative effects are often most keenly felt is in the restaurant industry, where margins are typically small.
California’s unemployment rate is officially the nation’s highest, at 5.3% as of February.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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