California has raised the minimum hourly wage for fast food workers to $20 an hour. This is a transformative step forward in the respect, dignity, racial justice, and living conditions for hard-pressed workers. Every California worker should should get the same break.

Business groups argued against the wage hike, saying that young workers wouldn’t be able to find jobs any more, but they were wrong. Looking at July employment numbers, the most recent for fast food jobs, California has 1% more jobs after the increase than it did in the same month last year, and 2% more jobs than it did the year before.

This is strong evidence that fair wages do not kill jobs.

The Roundtable report, Hungry Cooks, built the case for enactment AB 1228, the new minimum wage for fast-food workers.

Some of the largest employers of low-wage workers are nonprofit organizations that are exempted from paying taxes based on their claim that they are benefiting the public. These include colleges and universities, churches, vocational rehabilitation and social service agencies, and civic organizations.

Benefiting from the labor of workers who are not paid enough to afford housing calls into question the legitimacy of any employer, whether it is for-profit or nonprofit.

Low-wage workers in every industry have the same struggle as fast food workers in paying rent and buying groceries, and they deserve the same fairness.