Following heart-wrenching testimony by several employees of McDonalds, Wendy’s and other chain restaurants at the first-ever meeting of California’s newly formed Fast Food Council, workers rallied outside the Elihu M. Harris State Building in Oakland last week. 

Formed by Assembly Bill 1228, and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2023, the new council will establish statewide procedures for adopting and reviewing fast food restaurant health, safety and employment standards. It will operate through Jan. 1, 2029 and will have limited rulemaking powers.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.