This is a very big deal.

It was a big deal when the NLRB found the fast food chain shared some responsibility as to the treatment of their employees with their franchisees, and now its general counsel has Basically, the National Labor Relations Board has charged the company with violation of labor laws:

The National Labor Relations Board announced on Friday that its general counsel had brought 78 charges against McDonald’s and some of its franchise operators, accusing them of violating federal labor law in response to workers’ protests for higher wages around the country.

The general counsel’s move immediately drew outrage from a variety of national business groups because the labor action deemed McDonald’s a joint employer, a status that would make the fast-food titan equally responsible for actions taken at its franchised restaurants.

The labor board’s complaint asserts that McDonald’s and numerous franchise operators in more than a dozen cities illegally retaliated and made threats against workers who had joined national protests pushing for a base wage of $15 an hour in the nation’s fast-food restaurants.

………

The N.L.R.B.’s general counsel, Richard F. Griffin Jr., said that McDonald’s was a joint employer because it set numerous requirements for how food was prepared, how stores were run and how employees were managed. About 90 percent of the company’s restaurants in the United States are franchise operations.

Mary Joyce Carlson, a lawyer for the Fight for 15 movement seeking higher wages for the workers, said, “Today’s news makes it clear that the N.L.R.B.’s general counsel finds merit in the claim that McDonald’s — a $5.6 billion global company — is a joint employer because it exerts substantial power over the working conditions of employees at McDonald’s franchise stores and is therefore responsible for compliance with employment and labor laws.”

As I have noted before, McDonald’s franchising program places much tighter controls over the behavior of their franchise holders than most other similar restaurant chains, physically owning the property, directing personnel policy and, it appears, directing retaliation against legal unionization activities.

The general counsel issued the charges through 13 regional offices, including Manhattan, Chicago and Los Angeles. The first trials are scheduled to begin in March. The charges said that McDonald’s and its franchisees illegally disciplined employees who had protested, reduced their hours, spied on them and restricted their ability to communicate with union representatives.

For a company the size of McDonald’s, I don’t think that any penalties will meaningfully impact on their bottom line, they are a big company, but if this holds, it could form a foundation for criminal prosecutions against management, because it could form the basis of a criminal conspiracy.

Of course, we would need a DoJ that didn’t ignore law breaking by CEOs **cough** Eric “Place” Holder **cough**, but I can dream about this.