Business
California's strong labor laws aren't enough to protect workers, report says
Although California has some of the toughest labor laws in the country, a new study has found workers routinely suffer violations while on the job.
A team of researchers from UC San Francisco and Harvard University earlier this year surveyed 980 California workers at dozens of the state’s largest retail, food and other service sector companies. The workers reported frequent abuses over pay, work schedules and other issues.
The study found, for example, that 41% of the workers surveyed had experienced at least one serious violation of federal labor in the last year, such as being required to work off the clock, not being paid overtime, or being paid less than minimum wage, according to the report, which was released this week.
Violations around paid sick leave and meal breaks were also common, the researchers found. More than half of workers, 58%, were not given proper rest breaks.
All told, 91% of the workers surveyed experienced at least one violation in the last year, the study found.
The findings seemed at odds with the fact that California has led the way in raising labor standards, said one of the study’s authors, Daniel Schneider, a professor of social policy and sociology at Harvard He and his co-author, Kristen Harknett, a UCSF sociology professor, wanted to understand why the state’s rigorous laws weren’t doing more to protect workers from abuse.
The survey of workers, Schneider said, showed it was common for workers not to report problems. Many, he said, “have been robbed of their time and their wages and the vast majority do not come forward.”
Schneider said the study found that workers who came forward to report problems to someone inside their company were often met with retaliation or other negative consequences, and that workers are unlikely to seek help from regulatory bodies such as the state labor commissioner.
“This is not to say that the laws are ineffective, but that their full promise isn’t realized when they are being violated so routinely,” Schneider said. “We need a robust system of enforcement to ensure these labor laws are being enforced and complied with.”
The results of the new study come against the backdrop of renewed debate over a controversial California law known as the Private Attorneys General Act that gives workers the right to file lawsuits against their employers over back wages and to seek civil penalties on behalf of themselves, other employees and the state of California.
An initiative seeking to gut the act will appear on the ballot in November, the culmination of a long-running effort by business groups to scrap it.
Backers of the ballot initiative argue the law has resulted in a slew of lawsuits that small businesses and nonprofits have little ability to fight, and say that the long, costly lawsuits workers must pursue result in their getting less money than if they had filed complaints through state agencies.
Although not an expert on the law, Schneider said he believes there should be “more avenues for workers to come forward, to pursue some kind of redress, not fewer.”
The recent study is limited in scope, Schneider said, and does not capture the experiences of undocumented workers or those in domestic, agricultural and construction jobs where violations may be even more common.
Since the survey focused on workers at large firms, it leaves out service sector workers employed at smaller firms, which also likely experience violations at higher rates, he said.
Another study published this month by researchers at Rutgers University found that minimum wage violations have more than doubled in some major metro areas in California since 2014.
Workers in the Los Angeles, San Jose and San Diego metro areas who had been paid below minimum wage lost on average about 20% of the money they were owed, or as much as $4,000 a year, the study found.
In the San Francisco area, losses were even more steep, with workers losing an average of $4,300 to $4,900 annually to minimum wage violations, according to the study.
new video loaded: Jury Rejects Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against OpenAI and Microsoft
transcript
transcript
Jury Rejects Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against OpenAI and Microsoft
Elon Musk had accused OpenAI of “stealing a charity” by attaching a commercial company to Open AI, which was founded as a nonprofit. But a jury ruled that the statute of limitations had expired.
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“The evidence that Mr. Musk’s lawsuit was an after-the-fact contrivance by a competitor was overwhelming.” “This reminds me of key moments in this country’s history. The siege of Charleston, the Battle of Bunker Hill, these were major losses for Americans. But who won the war? And this one is not over. And to sum it up, I can sum it up in one word: appeal.”
By Meg Felling
May 18, 2026
Five Guys will close two Los Angeles-area locations later this month.
The burger chain announced in a recent state filing that its locations in City of Industry and Whittier will close in late May. An outlet in Merced will also close its doors in late June, and one in Hanford will shut down in early July, according to state court filings.
The burger giant is the latest fast-food chain to shutter locations as the industry struggles with rising labor and real estate costs in the state.
The company cited “financial hardship” as a reason for the closures, according to a filing.
Employers are legally required to submit a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, to alert employers, state and local officials at least 60 days before major layoffs. The initial notices were submitted in late April and early May.
The chain had steady growth in 2024, but seems to have stumbled in California. It opened 37 new storefronts that year, according to the company’s franchise disclosure document. Yet California stores accounted for eight of the 14 locations that closed that year.
The closures will result in 55 jobs lost across the four locations, according to the WARN notice.
A spokesperson for Five Guys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fast food chains have struggled against rising operational costs and increasingly cost-conscious customers.
California’s economic landscape has further complicated business in the state. While aerospace and defense companies have continued to flock to the state, companies in other sectors, including food, have started to bail out.
Five Guys ranked 42 in QSR Magazine’s top 50 U.S. restaurants list for 2026 and the number of locations in the country rose by 2% in 2025.
The chain got its start around 40 years ago in Virginia and now operates over 1,900 locations, according to its website.
The restaurant’s website lists over 85 locations in California, including at least 15 storefronts in the Los Angeles area.
A federal jury sided with OpenAI and its top executives on Monday in a feud with Elon Musk, who accused them of betraying a shared vision for it to guide artificial intelligence’s development as a nonprofit.
The nine-person jury unanimously found that Musk waited too long to file his lawsuit and missed the deadline for the statute of limitations.
Musk, the world’s richest man, was a co-founder of OpenAI, the company that launched in 2015 and went on to create ChatGPT. After investing $38 million in its first years, Musk accused OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his top deputy of shifting into a moneymaking mode behind his back.
The jury served in an advisory role, but Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the verdict Monday as the court’s own and dismissed Musk’s claims.
The trial that began on April 27 in Oakland shed light on the bitter falling-out between the two Silicon Valley titans and the origins of OpenAI, now a company valued at $852 billion and poised to become one of the largest initial public offerings in history.
The high-profile high-stakes showdown between two of the most powerful companies and leaders in technology was billed as a battle that could change the trajectory of AI.
There were two weeks of testimony from the dueling entrepreneurs and other key players in OpenAI’s history, providing a rare inside glimpse into the company, which evolved from a startup to one of the world’s most influential companies.
Musk had fallen out with his fellow co-founders, then, after OpenAI became arguably the most important company in AI, he decided he was not happy with how the trailblazer was managed after he left.
Musk claimed Altman, the startup’s chief executive officer, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman “stole a charity” by exploiting his early support for an altruistic research project so that they could later get rich by turning into a regular for-profit company.
OpenAI and its leaders said Musk was suing them to gain a competitive advantage for his own startup, xAI.
Musk was seeking more than $100 billion in damages — to be awarded to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm instead of to himself — as well as the removal of Altman and Brockman.
The case was seen as an existential threat to OpenAI. If the decision had gone the other way, it would have sparked a shakeup that would have destabilized the company just as it is working to ensure the U.S. takes the lead in AI and prepares for a public offering with a valuation approaching $1 trillion.
Associated Press and Bloomberg contributed to this article.
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