Panera Bread exempt from following California’s new minimum wage law due to relationship with Newsom: reports
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Panera Bread is exempt from following one of California’s newest laws, according to multiple reports. The new law will raise fast-food workers’ minimum wage to $20 per hour and will take effect beginning April 1. The new law doesn’t recognize places that operate “a bakery that produces for sale on the establishment’s premises bread” as […]

Panera Bread is exempt from following one of California’s newest laws, according to multiple reports. The new law will raise fast-food workers’ minimum wage to $20 per hour and will take effect beginning April 1.

The new law doesn’t recognize places that operate “a bakery that produces for sale on the establishment’s premises bread” as fast food, according to the law’s text.

Why the line was drawn at bread remains unclear.

However, Newsom pushed for the exemption, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. One of the primary beneficiaries of the exemption is Greg Flynn, a billionaire and longtime Newsom donor who has two dozen Panera Bread locations in California.

  • wolfpack86@lemmy.world
    59·
    10 months ago

    This is such a weird exemption. It’s so narrow that these places will have to raise their wages by default anyway.

    Nothing will stop their employees from just leaving to take a job at McDonald’s for $20/hr instead of the $15 or whatever panera wants to pay.

      • NateNate60@lemmy.world
        14·
        10 months ago

        “Bread” is a legally defined term.

        Bread, white bread, and rolls, white rolls, or buns, and white buns are the foods produced by baking mixed yeast-leavened dough prepared from [flour] and [water, milk, or egg] and [yeast]. The food may contain additional ingredients as provided for by paragraph © of this section. Each of the finished foods contains not less than 62 percent total solids as determined by the method prescribed in paragraph (d) of this section.

        • Fondots@lemmy.world
          12·
          10 months ago

          I’d need to see paragraphs C and D of that section, but based on that description alone, cinnamon buns could certainly be counted as bread as long as paragraph C doesn’t forbid a couple common ingredients like sugar, butter, and of course cinnamon.

          I guess you’d also need to know how they’re defining “produces,” do they have to make the bread from scratch on-location, or if they got shipments of premade dough from somewhere to bake in-store would that count as producing bread.

          I’m almost certain that the answers to those questions can be found with about 5 minutes of googling, I just honestly don’t care enough to Google it myself.

          • NateNate60@lemmy.world
            2·
            10 months ago

            Besides flour, yeast, water, milk, and egg, the rest of the ingredients are food additives. The CFR section in my comment above says that bread is produced by baking it.

        • bss03@infosec.pub
          4·
          10 months ago

          Seriously tho, didn’t one country determine that Subway sandwiches are served on pastry, not bread? I believe the legal definition (in that country) had to do with sugar content and Subway’s was too high.