​“This is huge news,” says Naz­ly Dama­sio, a spokesper­son for the Fight for 15 cam­paign, which orga­nized today’s demon­stra­tion with sup­port from the Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union (SEIU). ​“This is some­thing that work­ers have known all along, that [McDonald’s is] respon­si­ble for the pover­ty wages and the poor work­ing con­di­tions in their stores. …It’s very excit­ing. It re-ener­gizes us in the fight.”

It’s not the first time demon­stra­tors asso­ci­at­ed with the two year-old fast-food work­ers’ move­ment have crowd­ed the side­walk out­side the Rock N Roll McDon­ald’s — once the chain’s busiest loca­tion in Amer­i­ca — call­ing for a $15 an hour min­i­mum wage and the right to union­ize with­out retal­i­a­tion from their employ­er. This time, though, they’re here to cel­e­brate rather than protest. The cause for excite­ment? On Tues­day, the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board’s gen­er­al coun­sel Richard Grif­fin deter­mined that McDonald’s can be treat­ed as a ​“joint employ­er” at its fran­chis­es — which could make the cor­po­ra­tion part­ly account­able for the labor prac­tices of its franchisees.

On Thurs­day morn­ing, about 15 Chica­go McDonald’s employ­ees ral­lied in front of the city’s mon­u­men­tal down­town loca­tion, chant­i­ng, ​“Hey, cor­po­rate, you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side!”

In the past, McDonald’s has con­sis­tent­ly deflect­ed employ­ee com­plaints by cit­ing the fact that the vast major­i­ty of the chain’s restau­rants — around 90 per­cent—are fran­chis­es, whose own­ers and oper­a­tors are osten­si­bly per­mit­ted to set their own wage scale and deter­mine oth­er poli­cies. Thus, when staff mem­bers have tak­en their boss­es to task for unfair labor prac­tices, the cor­po­ra­tion has dodged crit­i­cism and legal penal­ties, claim­ing that the fran­chisees are sole­ly respon­si­ble for any unsat­is­fac­to­ry con­di­tions. And accord­ing to the New York Times, these cas­es added up: In the past 20 months, work­ers brought 181 alle­ga­tions to the NLRB, in which they accused their boss­es at McDon­ald’s of fir­ing employ­ees or cut­ting their hours to pun­ish them for par­tic­i­pat­ing in protests. Grif­fin ​“found mer­it” in 43 of them.

Both work­ers and legal experts have long claimed that McDonald’s has more influ­ence in these sit­u­a­tions than it would like to admit.

​“Employ­ers like McDonald’s seek to avoid rec­og­niz­ing the rights of their employ­ees by claim­ing that they are not real­ly their employ­ee, despite exer­cis­ing con­trol over cru­cial aspects of the employe­ment rela­tion­ship,” says Julius Get­man, Pro­fes­sor of Law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin. ​“This [rul­ing] from the NLRB’s Gen­er­al Coun­sel rec­og­nizes the real­i­ty of McDonald’s pow­er and con­trol. McDonald’s should no longer be able to hide behind its franchisees.”

Nev­er­the­less, McDonald’s main­tains that they are not joint employ­ers at the major­i­ty of their stores and that the NLRB has mis­in­ter­pret­ed the rela­tion­ship. Accord­ing to a state­ment from Heather Smed­stad, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of Human Resources at McDonald’s USA, the ham­burg­er chain ​“will con­test this alle­ga­tion in the appro­pri­ate forum.” She goes on to cau­tion that ​“this deci­sion changes the rules for thou­sands of small busi­ness­es, and goes against decades of estab­lished law regard­ing the fran­chise mod­el in the Unit­ed States.”

Demon­stra­tors at the Rock N Roll McDonald’s believe, how­ev­er, that if the deci­sion changes the rules, it changes them for the bet­ter. ​“I’m out here cel­e­brat­ing our vic­to­ry,” says Nan­cy Sal­ga­do who has worked at var­i­ous McDonald’s for the past 12 years. She goes on to explain,

Cor­po­rate was try­ing to say ​‘We’re not aware of the employ­ees, the fran­chise pays what­ev­er it wants to pay, we don’t know what else to do.’ But now that it has been admit­ted that they are in joint employ­ment it’s excit­ing because we knew that all along. Our work­ers know that. We have cor­po­rate com­ing in every once or twice a month to our stores, check­ing out how every­thing goes. … [The rul­ing] means a lot to us because we’re get­ting what we want: the big boss.”

If McDonald’s chal­lenges its clas­si­fi­ca­tion as joint employ­er, as it has threat­ened to do, either the NLRB or, even­tu­al­ly, the Supreme Court, could over­turn Tuesday’s rul­ing by Grif­fin, an Oba­ma appointee who worked at the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Oper­at­ing Engi­neers for 30 years. If the rul­ing stands, how­ev­er, advo­cates say it could set a prece­dent for all law­suits against oth­er chain restaurants.



In fact, says Mark Baren­berg, Co-Direc­tor of Colum­bia Law School’s Pro­gram on Labor Law and Pol­i­cy, Griffin’s deci­sion could ​“upend the fast-food industry’s decades-long strat­e­gy of ​‘out-sourc­ing’ legal respon­si­bil­i­ty to fran­chisees when it comes to secur­ing work­ers’ rights.”

Mean­while, those mobi­lized by the Fight for 15 move­ment intend to keep push­ing for high­er wages and a union.

​“We’re strug­gling. We’re all strug­gling,” says Remone Hugh­es, a South Side McDon­ald’s employ­ee who has been to at least two oth­er actions. Hugh­es says he has had a hard time pay­ing his bills, espe­cial­ly his ortho­don­tist’s tab for his braces, which cost him $600. ​“To work as hard as we do and to make as lit­tle as we do — it’s an inhu­man­i­ty,” he says.

At the last Fight for 15 demon­stra­tion he attend­ed, out­side McDonald’s head­quar­ters in near­by Oak­brook, Illi­nois, he was among 138 pro­test­ers arrest­ed for civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. When asked whether he would risk arrest again for his cause, he answers, ​“Prob­a­bly. No, not prob­a­bly. Yeah, I will.”