| Title | McDonalds Loses Ability to Shield Itself from Worker Lawsuits | |
| Date | Monday August 04 2014, @03:06PM | |
| Author | azrael | |
| Topic | ||
| from the would-you-like-fries-with-that? dept. | ||
The Center for American Progress reports
In a ruling that raises the stakes for numerous fast food worker efforts, the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) top lawyer said on Tuesday that McDonald's Corp. is responsible for the actions of the owner-operator franchisees who run the vast majority of its stores.
The arrangements McDonald's makes with its franchisees have long been understood to insulate the corporation from worker lawsuits. Because the buck stopped with individual owner-managers rather than with at the company's Illinois headquarters, worker lawsuits and unionization efforts were limited in scope and unable to seek remedies from the company's $5.6 billion in annual corporate profits.
Workers have repeatedly challenged that interpretation of the franchisee relationships, most recently in a slew of class-action wage theft lawsuits this spring. Those cases centered on a computer system installed by McDonald's at franchisee stores that compares labor costs to money coming in in real-time, encouraging managers to fiddle with workers hours and timesheets as necessary to keep that expenses ratio as low as possible at all times.
The suits named both franchisees and McDonald's itself, and workers and attorneys were optimistic that the legal challenges would poke holes in the company's claims to legal indemnity. Tuesday's ruling did just that, though it stemmed from separate, older claims involving workers who had attempted to unionize and were fired in retaliation.
[...]
A man named Richard who has worked in the same Kansas City McDonald's for 18 years agreed that franchisees will be better able to care for employees' well-being if the corporation is held accountable for wages and working conditions. "Some may think that who my boss is is just a technicality, but it matters," Richard said on Tuesday's call, because in order to adhere to the rules of their franchising contracts "the only thing franchisees can skimp on is wages."
"They would pay more if they could, I'm sure of it," he said, "but they're hamstrung. This will help us hold McDonald's accountable for wage theft and other violations, and make it easier to form a union."
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