In Boon to Fast Food Worker Strikes, NLRB Goes After McDonald's For "Violating Employees' Rights"

Marking another victory for fast food workers who have staged strikes and protests across the United States, the National Labor Relations Board announced Friday it is taking joint legal action against McDonald’s Corporation and several franchisees for violating employees’ rights to organize.

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The NLRB declared in a press release released Friday that it is issuing 13 complaints involving 78 charges of alleged wrongdoing against the fast food giant for “taking actions against [workers] for engaging in activities aimed at improving their wages and working conditions, including participating in nationwide fast food worker protests about their terms and conditions of employment during the past two years.”

Violations include: “discriminatory discipline, reductions in hours, discharges, and other coercive conduct directed at employees in response to union and protected concerted activity, including threats, surveillance, interrogations, promises of benefit, and overbroad restrictions on communicating with union representatives or with other employees about unions and the employees’ terms and conditions of employment,” the NLRB states.

The NLRB, furthermore, notes that it is treating McDonald’s and its franchisees as “joint employers”—striking a blow to the previous efforts of the parent corporation to dodge liability for how its restaurants treat workers.

The charges emerged from a growing fast food worker movement, which has organized rolling strikes and protests across the United States and world demanding a $15 dollar minimum wage and the right to organize. Workers have repeatedly called for McDonald’s to be held directly accountable for labor violations and poverty wages at franchises.