A major victory for fast food workers in forming unions at McDonalds, Burger King and other franchises took a big step forward yesterday with a landmark decision by the National Labor Relations Board in a case involving a Teamsters organizing campaign at a waste management company.

The NLRB ruled that Browning Ferris Industries qualifies as a “joint employer” alongside one of its subcontractors. The decision effectively loosens the standards for who can be considered a worker’s boss under law, and its impact will be felt in any industry that relies on franchising or outsourcing.

Unions already representing workers and helping them form unions in service and retail industries have been challenging big corporations that rely on these business models to claim no accountability to workers. Yesterday’s decision is a major victory that opens the door to organizing and representing millions of workers on large scale basis instead of on a worksite-by-worksite model which is very difficult.

The NLRB which has a Democratic majority whose members were appointed by President Obama ruled by a 3-2 margin with two Republican board members dissenting. The majority decision states, “It is not the goal of joint-employer law to guarantee the freedom of employers to insulate themselves from their legal responsibility to workers, while maintaining control of the workplace,” they wrote. “Such an approach has no basis in the National Labor Relations Act or federal labor policy.”

The Browning Ferris case grew out of an organizing effort by the Teamsters. The union sought to have the waste management company named as a joint employer for workers employed by the staffing firm Leadpoint Business Services, a subcontractor for Browning Ferris. If Browning Ferris were deemed a joint employer, it would have to join Leadpoint in bargaining with the Teamsters. Such a determination could also make it easier for the Teamsters to organize workers at other staffing agencies that do work for Browning Ferris.

A regional director of the NLRB ruled that Browning Ferris did not exert enough control over Leadpoint workers to be considered a joint employer under current standards, but the Teamsters appealed that ruling to the federal board. This week’s ruling will change those standards for future cases.

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