How Unions Want to Work Their Way Into the Fast Food Industry

WaPo's Lydia DePillis explains:

Of all industries, the fast food industry has been among the most difficult for labor to crack. McDonald’s, for example, is built to be union-proof: Since it’s made up of lots of little workplaces, the work of organizing is grinding and expensive.

So instead of having elections in individual restaurants, the SEIU started filing complaints with the National Labor Relations Board every time franchisees retaliated against workers for organizing at McDonald's, naming the company as a “joint employer” with its franchisees. Last December, the NLRB's general counsel decided to group all those cases together as a test for whether McDonald’s should in fact be liable for the actions of its franchisees.

If the SEIU prevails, McDonald’s could count as a single employer for the purposes of a union election, potentially allowing its workers to take one nationwide vote rather than thousands of individual ones. The franchising industry worries that could undermine the business model.

“What SEIU doesn't want people to understand is that you need employers before you can have employees,” says Matt Haller, a spokesman for the International Franchise Association. "Unfortunately for these workers, the union wants to get rid of the small local franchise business owners who employ the vast majority of potential new members they seek to represent.”

SEIU president Mary Kay Henry thinks that it won’t necessarily come to that. In some countries, like Denmark and New Zealand, the largest fast food companies already bargain with powerful unions over issues like wages and scheduling. She thinks unionization in the U.S. fast food industry would require a similar step change -- similar to how the United Auto Workers have a system of “pattern bargaining” that allows it to set the same wage standard with Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler.

"When the fast food workers make this breakthrough, we will introduce to the United States a form of organization that is as powerful as what the autoworkers birthed in the 1930s,” Henry said in an interview. In the mean time, minimum wage hikes fueled by the non-union fast food workers' campaign is helping SEIU locals win wage increases for their own members.

Here’s the catch: In order for the union drive to be successful, the corporate headquarters will have to decide to participate, Henry thinks. “What’s essential is that McDonald's, Burger King, or Wendy’s makes a decision that instead of litigating whether workers can get a seat at the table, that they set a table that workers can join and collectively bargain.”

And there’s no sign yet of that happening.