Nice franchise you have there — it would be a shame if anything was to happen to it. That’s the message from the NLRB:
President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board recently announced that due to complaints against a McDonald’s franchise, it will expand its definition of employer to make one company an employer of another company’s employees.
The impact of the NLRB’s alarming decision to find “joint employment” expands far beyond just the franchising world. Those two words — “joint employer” — would effectively alter the relationship between businesses at every level of the supply chain.
For now, the NLRB seems most focused on attacking franchises – since July 2014, more than three dozen unfair labor practice charges have been filed against franchises including McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Subway, Burger King, Panera Bread, and Jack in the Box.
I’ll remind you again of a story from 2002, helpfully archived by the Freepers:
Asked about Arcata’s pending cap on pattern restaurant expansion, [Documentary moviemaker Michael] Moore – widely recognized as a corporate antagonist – again confounded expectations. “Where will you eat?” he asked. “Can’t you have at least one Jamba Juice?”
Moore said that the news media try to make people think that they are a small minority when they want to dissent from mainstream America. But, according to Moore, dissenters aren’t the minority.
On request, Moore immediately endorsed Green Party candidate for State Assembly Doug Riley-Thron. “He first handed me a $20 bill, then he gave me another one, and another one,” Riley-Thron said later. “Then he said ‘Here, take it all,’ and he handed me a bunch of ones.” The total take: $80.
“I thought, ‘Dang, that was worth doing,'” Riley-Thron said.
After a book-signing session in the lobby, Moore departed Arcata.
‘Small businesspeople are rednecks that suppress the town’
Disappointingly, the Van Duzer presentation barely touched on several current issues involving Arcata and corporations, and Moore was said to have ruled out interviews.
But he had to sleep sometime, and a late-night vigil outside Eureka’s Carter House hotel yielded a further encounter.
Moore pulled up in the passenger seat of a Chevy van full of his entourage of family and friends. Looks of tired annoyance were on everyone’s faces, but a request for an interview was granted.
Moore dismissed criticism over his purchase of a million-dollar home. “I’m a millionaire, I’m a multi-millionaire,” he proclaimed. “I’m filthy rich. You know why I’m a multi-millionaire? ‘Cause multi-millions like what I do. That’s pretty good, isn’t it? There’s millions that believe in what I do. Pretty cool, huh?”
Asked about Arcata limiting the number of pattern restaurants to nine, Moore said he didn’t think it was a good idea. But what if corporate dominance transforms Arcata into “Anywhere, USA?” “You are in Anywhere, USA,” Moore said.
Moore seemed to embrace capitalistic Darwinism. “If the small businesses suck they’ll be driven out of business,” he said. “If they got a good restaurant, people will go there and eat. You know in my town the small businesses that everyone wanted to protect? They were the people that supported all the right-wing groups. They were the Republicans in the town, they were in the Kiwanas, the Chamber of Commerce – people that kept the town all white. The small hardware salesman, the small clothing store salespersons, Jesse the Barber who signed his name three different times on three different petitions to recall me from the school board. F**k all these small businesses – f**k ’em all! Bring in the chains. The small businesspeople are the rednecks that run the town and suppress the people. F**k ’em all. That’s how I feel.”
Barack Obama is just Michael Moore in a nicer suit.
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