When Ingrid Vilorio tested positive for COVID-19 in March 2021, she wasn’t worried about her symptoms or even ending up in the hospital. She was worried she wouldn’t be able to make rent.

Vilorio works at a Jack in the Box near her home in Hayward, California. When she told her manager she was sick, her manager told Vilorio that she wouldn’t be paid for any of the days she missed. So, eight days later, Vilorio went back to work.

“They needed me to come back, and I needed to pay my bills,” Vilorio said in Spanish during a recent interview.

Until one of her coworkers told her, Vilorio didn’t know that, under California law, she was entitled to sick pay for the days she missed. And with a son at home, she needed that pay. So, with the help of the workers’ rights group Fight for $15, she and a group of her coworkers went on strike, demanding not only the sick pay they were entitled to, but also basic health safeguards like hand sanitizer and masks.

“I was scared,” she said. “I didn’t want to have problems with my employer.”

After five months, the restaurant’s management finally agreed to pay Vilorio for the eight sick days. She was frustrated by the fact it took going on strike to receive the money she was owed.

Jack in the Box did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did any other fast-food restaurant mentioned in this story.

Vilorio is one of 550,000 fast-food workers in California, and her story is not unique.

“Wage theft is really rampant in the fast-food industry, as are health and safety hazards,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center. Jacobs also points out that Vilorio fits the core demographic of fast-food workers in California: Two-thirds are women, and 60 percent are Latin American.

Recent state-level legislation, A.B. 257 or the FAST Recovery Act, aimed to protect workers like Vilorio by convening a council made up of workers and corporate and franchise representatives to “establish sector-wide minimum standards on wages, working hours, and other working conditions related to the health, safety, and welfare” of fast-food workers.

“In an industry where it’s very hard for workers to unionize because of the franchise model, it creates a way in which workers can have a collective voice in the process of setting the standards in their industry,” said Jacobs.

The bill passed the California Assembly last January and Governor Gavin Newsom signed the measure on Labor Day. However, in December—just a month before the law was set to go into effect—it was put on hold. A coalition led by the International Franchise Association (IFA), a group whose members include McDonald’s and Arby’s, announced it had collected enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot in the next election (despite recent allegations that voters were misled by signature-gatherers telling them they were helping to raise wages for fast-food workers).

“Fortunately, now more than 1 million Californians have spoken out to prevent this misguided policy from driving food prices higher and destroying local businesses and the jobs they create,” said IFA President and CEO Matt Haller in a statement in late January. IFA did not answer specific questions about their opposition to the bill nor the allegations of fraudulent petitioners. Save Local Restaurants, the restaurant coalition group led by the IFA, did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

The passage of the FAST Recovery Act was seen as a watershed moment for workers who have long been striking and demanding better pay. Now, all eyes are on the battle in California at a time when fast-food workers around the nation still work for minimum wage and the federal tipped minimum wage—the rate tipped workers are paid in addition to tips—is $2.13. Industry experts say similar legislation could pass in other states with Democratic legislatures and governors, like New York and Michigan.

Jimmy Perez, a Papa John’s employee in Los Angeles, doesn’t buy the argument that the FAST Recovery Act would destroy local business.

“That’s just fear-mongering,” he said. Instead, he thinks corporations don’t want to give their workers any seats at the bargaining table. “They want to just turn it off and put it out like a cigarette. We’ve worked hard to get to this point to have a seat finally, and now they want to shut it down, which is very frustrating.”

During the pandemic, Perez said he and his colleagues faced increasingly unsafe working conditions, mostly due to irate customers.

“I’ve had objects thrown at me before. Our drivers have been robbed at gunpoint or threatened with weapons,” he said.

According to a 2022 report from the UCLA Labor Center, nearly half of fast-food workers experienced verbal abuse in the workplace and more than a third experienced violence.