McDonald's and some of its franchise operators face
78 charges of labor law violations from the National Labor Relations Board. The charges, contained in 13 legal complaints issued on Friday, involve illegal retaliation against workers who have participated in strikes over the past two years.
Intimidating workers or cutting their hours or even firing them for their activism, as McDonald's is alleged to have done, is standard practice. It's illegal, but employers do it all the time—just weeks ago a judge ruled that Walmart illegally threatened and punished its own worker activists. But there's something crucially important in these particular NLRB charges. McDonald's franchise operators are not the only ones being charged. McDonald's itself is being held responsible as a joint employer, as the NLRB said in July it should be. That's big:
This is the first time the fast-food giant has been held even partly responsible for labor violations allegedly committed by any of its 2,500 independent owners or franchisees. The franchisees operate their restaurants under contracts with McDonald’s that explicitly free the company of any responsibility for hiring, firing and supervising restaurant employees.
However, despite those contracts, the labor board points to all sorts of ways McDonald's exerts very specific control over how its franchise operators manage their labor. And "but we have a contract saying we're not doing what we're doing" should not be an effective defense for breaking the law.
McDonald's and various industry lobby groups plan to fight these charges—and in particular the labeling of McDonald's as a joint employer—with every lobbyist and lawyer they can find, because if McDonald's is held as a joint employer, other franchise businesses might face the same thing, and the arrangements that have allowed major corporations to constantly shift responsibility for terrible labor practices away from themselves might be undone. That, and not the puny punishments employers face for illegally threatening or firing activists, is why this is so scary to the fast food industry.