News You Need to Know in Two Minutes

AB 257, one of the most damaging bills that California’s restaurant community has faced in decades, will be the law in California — unless a referendum effort is successful. Immediately after Governor Newsom signed the bill into law last week, a coalition was formed to take the issue directly to voters. As Sabrina tells us in this week’s News You Need to Know, the CRA will support the coalition, which must collect more than half a million voter signatures by December in order to qualify for the 2024 ballot. 

Thanks to a published report from the Government Accountability Office, we now know that there is still $180 million remaining in the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. The Small Business Administration has agreed to distribute those dollars to restaurants, but the amount is not enough to help the many qualified applicants who never received a grant. Sabrina dives into those details in this week’s video and gives us more information about the fast-approaching Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo.

Here by popular demand is the CRA’s new, easy-to-use training platform for restaurant workers and managers. This new platform is a result of feedback from CRA members, who are working harder than ever to hire, train and retain employees. It was developed for the CRA by Train 321, a leading provider of training courses for major restaurant brands, and it features helpful courses like Front-of-House Basics, Back-of-House Basics, and Bar Basics. It also includes required training in sexual harassment prevention.

If you haven’t already registered your business through CalSavers, you can still do so. There is a deadline coming up that we’ve told you about before, but with everything that restaurants have had going on over the last two years, we thought you’d appreciate seeing this information again. 

With the state budget flush with an enormous amount of unexpected revenue, we are revising our ask of lawmakers as it relates to the unemployment insurance (UI) fund.

Instead of the initial $3 billion, the CRA is now asking the state to spend $10 billion stabilizing the UI fund. Why is this important? So that employers are not later forced to pay huge assessments for something that was beyond their control: the layoffs that resulted from a mandated closure of restaurants.

The Responsible Beverage Service (RBS) program is now being offered by the CRA. The training is required under new California law. In this week’s video, Sabrina tells us the value of the training and all it provides, including teaching alcohol servers how alcohol influences behavior, and how to identify signs of intoxication. 

The CRA is leading California restaurants from the Sacramento Valley, Central Valley, Bay Area, Central Coast, and from all over Southern California to Washington, D.C. this week for the National Restaurant Association’s Public Affairs Conference. You can guess what our top issue is: speaking up for the thousands of qualified applicants in California who got left behind when the Restaurant Revitalization Fund ran out of dollars. The House of Representatives has voted to replenish the fund; now, it’s up to the Senate.
 

As CRA members know, the notorious law known as PAGA is being fought on at least two fronts: the effort toward a ballot initiative in California that CRA is helping to lead, and a case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. So, what will the ruling mean for California restaurants? Sabrina breaks it all down in this week’s News You Need to Know, and tells us all the reasons why our ballot initiative will still be needed. 
 

The CRA has had early success in our work to elevate the issue of California’s massive debt that resulted from an enormous spike in unemployment payments during the COVID pandemic, but what happens next? Will state lawmakers agree with Governor Newsom that the state should begin to pay down that debt? Sabrina explains why this fight is critical to minimizing the threat of future employer assessments.

Getting an initiative qualified for the ballot – and then passed by the voters – are no small tasks, but we think voters would agree: the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) isn’t doing what was intended, and it’s hurting a lot of people.

AB 257, a bill that creates an unelected “government council” made up of political appointees, has passed in the State Assembly, barely receiving the number of votes it needed to move forward. If you haven’t already visited our website, https://notakeouttakeover.com/, take a moment to do so today. There, you can help make your voice heard about this bill, which targets California’s restaurants with an untold amount of new regulation. It would leave elected lawmakers with little say – if any – on new labor regulation passed by the council.

If you’re a restaurant that qualified for a Restaurant Revitalization Fund grant but didn’t get one, you’re not alone. That’s true for tens of thousands of restaurants in California and hundreds of thousands around the country. And, not surprisingly, new data shows that those who were left out of getting help from that fund are struggling, especially because of the current impacts of the omicron variant of COVID-19. You can get a clearer picture of the situation by watching Sabrina’s video, but be sure to click here to tell Congress to replenish the RRF.

Last summer, we helped defeat AB 257, the bill that aims to create an entirely new government entity, a “government council” made up of unelected, unaccountable political appointees. This council would have the authority to make labor law for counter-service restaurants with more than 30 locations nationwide, but proponents of this idea have already said that if they are successful, they will expand the law throughout the restaurant industry and to other industries as well. 
 

At the CRA’s urging, Governor Newsom has proposed tax fairness for restaurants who received grants from the federal government’s Restaurant Revitalization Fund, along with a partial paydown of the state’s unemployment insurance (UI) debt. Neither of these measures will be official until the state legislature passes the governor’s budget proposal.