City Councilman Brad Lander said he planned to introduce a bill on Wednesday that would require fast-food businesses to show “just cause” for firing workers and give them a chance to appeal dismissals through arbitration.

Mr. Lander, a Democrat from Brooklyn, said he was responding to surveys of fast-food workers indicating that “there’s a substantial percentage of employees that have been fired unfairly.” One woman said she was fired from a Chipotle restaurant for not smiling enough.

But restaurant industry officials and lawyers who represent the industry said the proposal was just the latest stratagem employed by a national union that has been trying to organize fast-food workers ever since they first staged protests for better wages and working conditions in 2012…

“No one should fear being fired for no reason at all,” Mr. Lander said in an interview. “This is not saying an employer has to keep a person who’s not doing their job well.”