Labor board deals final blow to Obama-era effort to unionize fast-food industry

The National Labor Relations Board, the main federal labor law enforcement agency, rolled back an Obama administration-era effort to help unions organize franchisor corporations such as McDonald's through the so-called joint employer rule, dealing a blow to organized labor.

Joint employer referred to when two businesses were so tightly aligned that one could be said to be responsible for another's workplace policies. Prior to the Obama administration, this only applied if one business had "direct control" over another. During the Obama years, the much looser "indirect control" standard was adopted. Tuesday's announcement means the direct-control standard is the norm again.

The seemingly minor rewrite to an obscure legal standard followed a coordinated push by labor unions such as the Service Employees International Union, which were seeking to organize the fast-food industry. Business trade groups mounted an equally fierce pushback to get the Trump administration to restore the pre-Obama standard. The Labor Department readopted the earlier standard last month. The NLRB followed suit Tuesday.

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