With friends like California Governor Gavin Newsom helping you, who needs enemies? The owner of a popular McDonald’s franchise in San Francisco has been forced to permanently close after he couldn’t keep up with Newsom’s $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast food employees. The Stonestown Galleria McDonald’s had been a fixture in the 19th Avenue and Ingleside neighborhoods for more than 30 years.
Scott Rodrick, the franchise owner, says the state’s new $20 minimum wage was just too much for him to remain in business any longer. The employees at the franchise join the other 10,000 fast-food workers who have lost their jobs after the state legislature implemented the new minimum wage in April.
State Assemblyman Chris Holden (D), who sponsored the original minimum wage hike bill, said it was designed to help a “father or mother feed their children… a student put gas in their car… a grandparent get their grandchild a birthday gift.”
Do you know what else would help all those categories of fast food workers?
Not getting them fired by raising the minimum wage too high!
Every fast food franchise in the state was already forced to raise their menu prices back in January when the statewide minimum wage was increased to $16 an hour. With fast food employees’ hourly wage jumping to $20 just four months later, franchises now expect to have to raise prices to astronomical heights.
The CEO of McDonald’s anticipates having to raise the price of all the company’s “value meals” to more than $20 by this fall if they want to stay open. That will put fast food out of the price range of most of its main customers—low-income families and college students. Hopefully, other states are paying attention to Gavin Newsom’s economic disaster and taking notes.
