Current Events > Trump admin reverses Obama-era rule helping workers fight chains

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https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/business/economy/labor-employers.html?

The National Labor Relations Board on Thursday overturned a key Obama-era precedent that had given workers significant leverage in challenging companies like fast-food and hotel chains over labor practices.

The ruling changes the standard for holding a company responsible for labor law violations that occur at another company, like a contractor or franchisee, with which it has a relationship.

The doctrine also governs whether such a corporation would have to bargain with workers at a franchise if they unionized, or whether only the owners of the franchise would have to do so.

While most labor law experts expected the labor board, which gained a Republican majority only in late September, to overturn the boards so-called joint-employer decision from 2015, the speed of the change came as a surprise to many.

Frankly, its shocking, said Wilma B. Liebman, a former Democratic appointee on the board who once served as its chairwoman.

The boards 3-to-2 vote, along party lines, restores the pre-2015 standard, which deemed a fast-food corporation a joint employer only if it exercised direct and immediate control over workers at the franchise, and in a way that was not limited.

Employer groups had been agitating to undo the standard that was set under President Barack Obama almost from the moment it was decided, and they applauded the decision on Thursday.

Todays decision restores years of established law and brings back clarity for restaurants and small businesses across the country, said Cicely Simpson, executive vice president of the National Restaurant Association, in a statement.
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he key question in determining whether a company, like a fast-food corporation, is a joint employer of workers employed by another company, like one of the chains franchisees, is the degree of control exercised by the corporation over workers at the franchise. The ruling on Thursday declared that such control must be direct.

Under the Obama-era doctrine, the fast-food corporation could be held liable for labor violations that occurred at the franchise even if the control it exerted was indirect for example, if it required the franchisee to use software dictating certain scheduling practices or if it had the right to exercise control over workers that it nonetheless didnt exercise.

The reversal could have important implications for the ability of workers to win concessions from employers through collective bargaining.

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Thanks Obama
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i think this is fair since iirc most fast food restaurants are individually owned
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Antifar posted...

The key question in determining whether a company, like a fast-food corporation, is a joint employer of workers employed by another company, like one of the chains franchisees, is the degree of control exercised by the corporation over workers at the franchise. The ruling on Thursday declared that such control must be direct.

Fair, next.

You may work at a McDonalds, but you're working for the franchisee.

So what's the idea here? No more free french fries?
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Seems fine to me.
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So... is this bad or good?
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LastTomorrow posted...

So... is this bad or good?

Kinda "meh" I think.

Romulox28 posted...

i think this is fair since iirc most fast food restaurants are individually owned

This so hard. Collectively bargaining against a corporation that doesn't actually run your employer's business made zero sense.
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