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California’s Fast Food Council, created under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s high-profile labor deal, is sitting in limbo with no chairperson, no full meetings in more than a year, and roughly $1.1 million in taxpayer funding still paying for a body that is not functioning.
What was pitched as a powerful watchdog over wages and working conditions in one of the state’s largest low-wage industries has instead become a stalled bureaucracy, now drawing heat from fast food workers who say the state built the system, raised wages, then left the oversight structure to rot.
The council was established in 2023 as part of a politically charged compromise that followed years of conflict over fast food pay.
The deal set a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers at chains with at least 60 locations nationwide and created the Fast Food Council to regulate wages, safety standards, and workplace conditions for roughly 630,000 workers across California.
But the body tasked with overseeing those rules has barely functioned since.
State law requires at least two meetings per year.
The council managed to meet in 2024, but since then activity has collapsed.
Only two subcommittee meetings were held last year, with the most recent in February 2025.
After that, the council lost its chair when Nick Hardeman resigned following his appointment by Newsom to another state position.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
