And the beat rolls on:
In a significant victory for fast-food demonstrators, the Obama administration filed 13 legal complaints on Friday against McDonald’s USA, LLC, alleging 78 instances in which it violated federal labor law by punishing workers for taking part in fast food protests.
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.The complaints allege that the company and its franchisees retaliated against protesters by reducing their hours or firing them.
The Republicans are going to go after the National Labor Relations Board like a white man on safari. This is going to be fun to watch, but we better not lose any presidential elections anytime soon.
I just want to say that what Obama’s done since the midterm elections is the best test of his ideological true colors. So, this is what vindication looks like folks.
NLRB general counsel Richard Griffin, who acts as a sort of prosecutor, may issue legal complaints against any business, including a franchisee. In July Griffin drew considerable consternation from McDonald’s and other franchisors when he determined that the McDonald’s corporation could be named a “joint employer” in such complaints.
Griffin did just that on Friday, alleging in 13 complaints against franchisees around the country that McDonald’s jointly employed workers against whom franchisees unlawfully retaliated for protesting working conditions — chiefly low wages. That’s a first for the NLRB and makes McDonald’s potentially liable, financially, for any back pay that an administrative judge or the NLRB may order, and potentially responsible, legally, for any failure to carry out an order to reinstate an employee.
I wouldn’t eat McDonald’s with your mouth because it doesn’t even vaguely resemble food. They should be renamed McDiabetes.
But, more to the point, they should pay their workers more, and they shouldn’t be able to retaliate against employees who ask for better pay in the public square.
