Language reflecting those changes was published on Monday after negotiations went down to the wire — with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office acting as a mediator — as the end of the legislative session approached.

“AB 1228 clears the path for fast food workers to start making much-needed improvements to the policies that affect their own workplaces and their lives,” SEIU California President David Huerta said in a statement. “It will give voice and structural power to more than half a million fast-food workers in our state; it will also ensure that franchisees have a seat at the table — along with workers, advocates, franchisors, and the State. We urge the legislature to pass AB 1228 and take this huge step toward tackling poverty and inequality.”

International Franchise Association President & CEO Matt Haller said in a statement that the pact “protects the franchise business model” while forestalling “more significant — and potentially existential — threats, costs, and regulatory burdens targeting local restaurants in California.”

The truce caps years of political maneuvering in California as unions push to realize a long-deferred dream of organizing fast food workers. A decade after the franchise-focused “Fight for 15 and a Union” movement launched in New York, labor succeeded in boosting wages in California and other states but failed to win collective bargaining rights.

A breakthrough came in Sacramento last year, when SEIU California pushed through a bill creating an industry regulator — effectively achieving a form of sectoral bargaining, a type of industry-wide organizing that is more common in Europe.

What followed was a dizzying game of cat and mouse. Fast food corporations swiftly qualified a referendum, blocking the law until the 2024 election. SEIU responded by pushing a new bill that would impose joint liability on franchise chains — a provision that had been stripped out of last year’s law in a failed attempt at mollifying industry opposition. The union also quietly secured funding in the state budget for a defunct wage regulator that could have ordered pay increases.

The industry, meanwhile, has spent millions of dollars to derail the liability bill while dropping $50 million into its referendum effort, previewing a bruising campaign fight. The liability bill has been parked in committee since the summer as negotiations unfolded.

Assemblymember Chris Holden (D-Pasadena) said the impending ballot fight and the followup bill created the conditions for a compromise as talks intensified starting in August.

“I think that having that positioned to be on the ballot for a vote at the end of next year, and then having joint liability in a bill that was moving the Legislature, became a motivation for all parties to sit down and have an honest conversation,” Holden said in an interview.

Newsom helped clear the way to a deal on Friday by signing legislation allowing proponents to pull referendums from the ballot — an SEIU-backed bill to clamp down on what the union called industry abuses of the referendum process.