HR Management & Compliance

Latest fast-food protests buoyed by NLRB, Obama stance

More fast-food protests are planned for September 4, with the latest round including homecare workers and possible civil disobedience.

Fast-food and other low-wage workers have been staging periodic strikes and demonstrations since 2012 in hopes of increasing their hourly wage. In addition to expanding the type of workers represented, planners of the new protests have said they’re ready to face arrests for nonviolent civil disobedience.

This week’s protests also are significant because they’re the first since National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Richard Griffin issued an announcement on July 29 that the McDonald’s corporation is a joint employer with its franchisees. That means the corporate giant could be held jointly responsible in complaints stemming from employee efforts to unionize and fight for higher wages.

Griffin’s announcement isn’t the last word, though, since it faces administrative review, approval from the entire NLRB, and court review. But it does give the protesters’ message more punch, according to Bart N. Sisk, an attorney with Butler Snow LLP in Memphis, Tennessee, and a contributor to Tennessee Employment Law Letter.

“The position taken by the NLRB helps in identifying the target. The union wants this to be David vs. Goliath. But, to pull that off, they need Goliath(s),” Sisk says. “The target isn’t some unknown franchise owner. It’s the corporate giants like McDonald’s and Burger King. So the position taken by the General Counsel helps by identifying a target the public can rally against.”

The protests also got a boost from President Barack Obama’s Labor Day message, in which he called for higher wages and voiced his support for unions. “If I were looking for a good job that lets me build some security for my family, I’d join a union,” he said at a Labor Day union festival hosted by the AFL-CIO.

A major player in the fast-food protests is the Fight for 15 organization, which is pushing for a $15-an-hour wage. Figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put the mean hourly wage for food preparation and serving workers, including fast food, at $9.08. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

Protesters claim much of the fast-food labor force is made up of adults with families instead of teenagers, and low wages and unpredictable schedules make it difficult to earn a living. In addition to a higher wage, the workers are asking for the right to unionize.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has been a major backer of the protests even though few fast-food workers are unionized. A union watchdog group, Center for Union Facts, has released information claiming that SEIU is “the funding muscle” behind the fast-food protests. The group also identifies leaders of the fast-food campaign as having close ties to SEIU.

The new strikes are planned for more than 100 cities, according to media reports, and will bring in a new group of workers—homecare workers. In addition, leaders of the effort have vowed to do “whatever it takes” to make their case for a $15 hourly wage.

Terrence Wise, a Burger King employee from Missouri and a member of the campaign’s organizing committee, was quoted by various media outlets as saying that 1,300 workers meeting in a convention in late July voiced their willingness to participate in “nonviolent, peaceful protests in the tradition of the civil rights movement.” He said the protesters “are prepared to take arrests to show our commitment to the growing Fight for $15.”

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