Episode 326: Like Their Fees, The New Settlement Agreement With Visa & Mastercard Is Junk

The Working Lunch

We sit down with Doug Kantor, the general counsel of the National Association of Convenience Stores, to discuss the biggest story this week - the preliminary settlement of the class action lawsuit brought by a group of retailers almost 20 years ago accusing the credit card companies and their electronic payments systems of being an anti-competitive monopoly. We’ll discuss the merits of the settlement, whether it will be approved by the courts, and what it means for pending legislation in Congres to reign in out-of-control interchange fees. And California’s minimum wage for fast-food workers is rising to $20/hr next week, the highest statewide wage in the country. But the media coverage this week, somewhat unexpectedly, has been highlighting the impact to operators and the industry and reporting on closures, job losses and other negative ramifications. It’s not been quite the media week the SEIU was hoping for. We’ll dive into that. We’ll talk about those issues and wrap it up with the legislative scorecard.