McDonald's demanding for rights under NLRB (Photo : Aljazeera)
Considering that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) won a subpoena to throw out documents submitted by McDonald's over a court ruling that it is a joint employer of franchise workers, the fast food company revealed through its lawyers that it has spent over $1 million in "producing over 160,000 pages of documents in response" to the subpoena.
McDonald's continue to fight that ruling, claiming that it cannot be responsible for low wages among other work conditions faced by workers in its franchise restaurants because they are independent, and that it is only a "victim of a union-orchestrated attack on its brand."
Lawyers for McDonald's disclosed that the amount already spent on collecting material documents is the most burdensome in the history of the company.
The NLRB's subpoena had in May mandated the restaurant to produce documents and emails from over 50 executives and employees of the fast food company, because the court wanted to know the level of "McDonald's involvement in countering union-backed nationwide protests."
One of such was the Fight for 15 wide protests where employees demanded for a minimum wage of $15 per hour.
While the fast food company imagines that it could be found guilty of "alleged labor violations" in 29 franchises across five states, McDonald's said this shouldn't be more than $50,000.
McDonald's is bent double to fight the NLRB's subpoena as well as the labor violations allegations to a standstill because losing the case would mean that its employees would be empowered to unionize for the first time in the company's history.
This would empower employees under the unionized group to demand and fight for wage increases, and the fast food company would be forced to continually bargain with its workers over the slightest demands.
