Fast Food Workers’ NLRB Victory is a Win for All Working People

What a difference a month makes. In June, pundits were predicting the Supreme Court decision in Harris v. Quinn would effectively end the union movement. While the ruling was wrong-headed, it was far from the predicted deathblow. Fast-forward to the end of July, when the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the McDonald’s corporation could be treated as a joint employer with its franchisees in labor complaints, and the tables are turned.

I don’t want to overstate things — the NLRB decision won’t solve all of labor’s problems — but to paraphrase Vice President Joe Biden, it’s kind of a big…deal.

In a single decision, the NLRB decimated the defense big fast food companies have used for decades to avoid responsibility for their workers: that working conditions are set by individual franchise restaurants, not by corporate headquarters.

The decision makes it easier for workers at an individual fast food restaurant who have been mistreated to hold the parent corporation responsible for fixing poor working conditions and paying lost wages. It also opens the door for a previously unthinkable possibility: Someday fast food workers could form a national or international union with the ability to bargain with a single corporate employer.

So why is this important for public employees? For years, major corporations have fought to undermine private sector unions so they can reduce workers’ pay and eliminate their benefits. In recent years, they’ve worked to weaken public sector unions and eliminate pensions for government workers. One weapon: PR campaigns targeted to non-union private workers.

Take the recent BART strike in the Bay Area as an example. BART and its allies spent more than a million dollars on a slick campaign designed to stoke jealousy among working class BART riders over BART employees’ salaries and benefits. It took public outrage over the deaths of two track workers at the hands of scab trainees to force a contract.

Instead of waiting for management to bombard nonunion workers with false propaganda about overpaid public workers, we can educate workers in the fast food industry about their rights, help them organize unions and improve their wages. That way, the next time the boss incites fast food workers to ask “why do government workers have such a good deal?” they’ll turn on the boss and ask “why do I have such a bad one?”

Bob Schoonover, President