Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Who’s Your Boss? Team Trump Has a Clear New Answer

A contractor like a McDonald’s franchise, not the corporation, will now be liable for employment-law violations. That ends a lot of confusion.

January 15, 2020 at 12:00 PM UTC

By Michael R. Strain

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

Does he know who his boss is?
Photographer: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

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If you’re a typical wage earner, then your employer is obligated to pay you at least the federal minimum wage, along with overtime if you work beyond 40 hours in a given week. But who is your employer? On Sunday, the administration of President Donald Trump brought a common-sense answer to this important and, surprisingly, unresolved question.

Determining who is liable for violations of employment law is more complicated than it may seem. Take a cashier at, say, an independent McDonald’s franchise. Certainly she works for the franchised restaurant. But does she also work for McDonald’s, the national brand? What responsibility does McDonald’s Corp. have for her?