One in four fast food workers in Los Angeles were paid below the minimum wage in 2024 — a figure that is eight times higher than the violation rate in 2009. That’s according to a new study from Northwestern University’s Workplace Justice Lab and Rutgers University. In total, workers lose about 16% of their wages, which amounts to about $3500 a year per worker.
“That's a really large number for minimum wage workers. It means that they're, in many cases, unable to put food on the table, pay their rent, pay for child care. It pushes a lot of workers below the poverty line,” says political science professor Daniel J. Galvin, lead author of the study and director of the Workplace Justice Lab at Northwestern University.
Fast food workers, according to researchers, are more likely to experience wage theft than other industries such as health care and retail. Wage theft tripled for fast food workers from 3% in 2009 to 25% in 2024.
“Fast food is notoriously a franchise-based model, which decentralizes the responsibility for labor standards to franchisers. Another part is that there’s unusually low rates of unionization in fast food,” Galvin explains. “Also, fast food workers tend to be younger and more likely to fear retaliation if they should complain about these forms of wage theft.”
Galvin points out that educating workers about their rights in the workplace could reduce wage theft.
“Many workers don’t know what their rights are, so they don’t always know that they can complain, whether that’s because of just a lack of information or language barriers,” Galvin says. “Another big reason is that this is an industry where you have a lot of immigrants. There are reasonable fears, especially in today’s political climate, of deportation. So that can be a large deterrent.”
The LA City Council’s Economic Development Committee will soon consider a motion that would mandate paid training courses for fast food workers. The training would cover topics like anti-discrimination and harassment protections, as well as workers’ rights when it comes to wage theft.
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