According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, more than two-thirds of California’s fast-food workers are adults aged 20 and older. Nearly 70% live in households with four or more people, and their wages contribute 40% of their family’s annual income. Two-thirds of California fast-food workers are women, 8 in 10 are workers of color, and 6 in 10 Are Latino.

One other local county has a living wage, and four other cities in the region have minimum-wage ordinances that differ from the state’s.

For decades, “we underfunded public services in California,” Rhee tells me. “It comes down to these very individual cases, but I think it ties into this larger issue of how we recruit, retain and compensate public employees.”

Recently, aggressive anti-union tactics have been employed by liberal-facing companies like REI and Starbucks, said Jane McAlevey, a union organizer, author and senior policy fellow at UC Berkeley.