McDonald’s Wants to End Potential Landmark Workplace Case
Fast-food workers and union members protest outside a McDonald's restaurant in Oakland, California, on Feb. 12.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
McDonald’s and the U.S. National Labor Relations Board asked an agency judge to approve the settlement of a long-running workplace-retaliation case, cutting short a trial that could lead to increased corporate liability for alleged wrongdoing by franchisees.
The trial, which was to resume Monday after a two-month delay, stems from claims by McDonald’s franchise employees that they were fired for joining a national effort to obtain a $15 hourly wage, the so-called Fight For $15 movement backed by the Service Employees International Union. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Saturday joined attorneys for the union-backed Fast Food Workers Organizing Committee in accusing the labor board’s Trump-appointed general counsel, Peter Robb, of wrongly rushing to settle the case on terms favorable to McDonald’s.