BY LAURIE MERMET for The Chief<\/p>\n
When New York City passed a law in 2021 saying fast food bosses needed a legitimate reason to fire workers, New Yorkers had strong opinions. Critics said it would hurt businesses and kill jobs. Supporters said they needed protection from getting fired for no good reason.<\/p>\n
Three years later, a new report from the city Comptroller Brad Lander shows what actually happened: The fast food industry grew.<\/p>\n
The report, released last week, found that since the law took effect in July 2021, the number of fast food restaurants in the city rose from 8,269 to 8,385. More significantly, employment surged 18 percent, jumping from 64,617 to 76,291 workers in the same period.<\/p>\n
Now city leaders want to expand these protections to other workers, including delivery and Uber drivers.<\/p>\n
Before this law, fast food workers could get fired for almost any reason \u2014 or no reason at all \u2014 as long as it wasn\u2019t discrimination.<\/p>\n
The law requires employers to give written explanations for firings, layoffs or hour cuts of 15 percent or more. For smaller issues, workers get multiple warnings and a chance to improve before being fired, and when layoffs happen, the newest workers go first instead of the veterans.<\/p>\n
Didn’t slow growth<\/p>\n
The fast food restaurant growth happened while the industry was still bouncing back from Covid-19. The law doesn\u2019t appear to have slowed things down at all, the report showed. Growth after the law beat the rates from pre-law and pre-pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The law] was implemented while this industry was obviously hit hard by the pandemic, and there\u2019s no evidence to suggest that it slowed down growth in employment while the industry was recovering,\u201d said Matan Rider, research and policy analyst for worker\u2019s rights at the Office of the NYC Comptroller who heavily contributed to the report.<\/p>\n
After the law passed, the number of restaurants grew by an average of 0.2 percent each quarter. Employment grew even faster, at 1.7 percent per quarter.<\/p>\n
The report looked at actual cases to see how the law worked.<\/p>\n
At a Queens Starbucks, a worker helping to unionize the store got fired, and the company said he lied about workplace violence and missed part of a Covid-19 screening. City investigators found no proof that the employee lied and discovered that other employees skipped the screening frequently without getting fired.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the worker got his job back and received back pay.<\/p>\n
‘Adds a lot of needed protections’<\/p>\n
In another instance, at a Subway location in Brooklyn, employees found coworkers to cover their shifts when personal emergencies came up but got fired anyway. The city found they\u2019d been let go without a good reason and that the Subway owner didn\u2019t have the warning system the law requires.<\/p>\n
From 2021 to 2024, the city\u2019s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection recouped over $185,900 for 48 workers across 55 cases under the just cause law. The biggest settlement came in December 2024 when Starbucks paid $38 million covering more than 15,000 workers at 200 locations for unreasonably cutting hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stories from workers show that this law adds a lot of needed protections that help them deal with difficult situations,\u201d Rider said.<\/p>\n
He said the city timed the report in-part for the law\u2019s three year anniversary and wanted to add evidence to the debate about expanding it. The report is adding fuel to the question of whether all NYC workers should get these protections.<\/p>\n
City Council Member Tiffany Cab\u00e1n thinks so, as she\u2019s pushing for the Secure Jobs Act, which would give every worker in the city the same protections fast food workers have now. She first introduced it in December 2022 and brought it back in May 2024. It hasn\u2019t passed yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking New Yorkers should not be forced to live under the constant threat of being fired for any reason, or no reason at all, with no warning, no explanation, and no recourse,\u201d Cab\u00e1n wrote in an emailed statement to The Chief.<\/p>\n
The city has already acted on delivery and ride-share workers. A bill that passed this month \u2014 Intro 1332<\/a> \u2014 protects app-based delivery workers from getting deactivated from their accounts without just cause.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery worker deserves just cause protections,\u201d said Bhairavi Desai, who runs the New York Taxi Workers Alliance with 28,000 members. \u201cThat\u2019s why our Uber and Lyft members fought for and won just cause for Uber and Lyft drivers.\u201d<\/p>\n