Fight for $15 rejects deal between Trump NLRB official and McDonald’s

By MARK GRUENBERG
PAI Staff Writer

New York (PAI) – Fight For $15 And A Union, the Labor-backed drive to empower low-wage workers nationwide, rejected a deal between the Trump-named National Labor Relations Board and McDonald’s on April 5.

The settlement would have given harmed workers back-pay but would also shunt aside the major issue in the case, the joint responsibility of corporate headquarters and their local franchise-holders for obeying or breaking labor law.

The fast food giant and NLRB General Counsel Peter Robb – its top enforcement officer – presented their closed-door agreement to NLRB Administrative Law Judge Lauren Esposito in New York. But it needed Fight For $15’s OK to go ahead.

Fight For $15’s lawyer, Micah Wissinger, bounced it.

So did Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry, whose union is the top backer of Fight For $15.

“We can’t let them (corporations) get away with off-loading employees to their franchisees,” Henry told a National Consumers League-sponsored conference on wage and hour law the week before the New York hearing. “At this moment, McDonald’s is trying to get away with it through negotiating with Trump’s NLRB General Counsel.”

DID NOT HOLD MCDONALD’S RESPONSIBLE

“The deal was improper because it did not hold McDonald’s responsible for unlawful retaliation against workers who took part in nationwide protests calling for higher wages” at the fast food firm, Wissinger’s firm, Levy Ratner, said in a statement.

The deal, or lack of it, is important, because of the wide impact of the key issue involved: Whether a corporate headquarters is equally responsible with its local franchises for obeying or breaking labor law.

As long as franchise holders could be separated from headquarters in occupations with millions of workers – hotel chains, fast food restaurants, drug stores and more – the workers could boomerang from pillar (headquarters) to post (the local owner) in trying to win their union rights, bargain or get back pay. The McDonald’s case aimed to end that back-and-forth.

HOLDING HEADQUARTERS, FRANCHISE OWNERS JOINTLY RESPONSIBLE

Beginning in 2012, Fight For $15 has been arguing for, and pushing cases about, holding both headquarters and franchise-holders jointly responsible. When Democrats held an NLRB majority, former General Counsel Richard Griffin favored that position.

The fast food firm agreed to $1 million in back pay for harmed workers, but not the key joint employer issue, which is also a bugaboo of Congress’ ruling Republicans. Fight For $15’s “no” keeps the issue alive.

The NLRB’s own statement made it clear McDonald’s settled to avoid lawsuits over the back pay. NLRB claimed the settlement would “represent a full remedy for the employees who have waited since the first charges were filed in November of 2012 and, if approved, would avoid years of possible additional litigation.”