Deregulation is harder than it looks, but the Trump administration did take one significant step this past Wednesday:
Outside of a $15 minimum wage, the fast-food industry’s big mortal fear when it comes to labor law is over classifying companies with franchise business models as “joint employers” along with their franchisees. Their fear increased substantially in 2016, following news that President Obama’s Labor Department had issued guidelines recommending precisely this classification. It’s probably no surprise, then, to learn that yesterday the new Labor Department came to those giant corporations’ rescue by deleting the Obama-era guidelines entirely.
This will continue to be fought over in the courts:
The DOL’s withdrawal doesn’t necessarily translate to an immediate win for fast-food employers, though. The guidance it removed wasn’t technically law, so judges weren’t obligated to defer to it, former Labor deputy secretary Seth Harris tells the L.A. Times. He feels, “If anything, it makes it harder for employers, because they don’t know clearly what standards they should apply.”
And it would help if they staffed the NLRB:
The NLRB has recently taken workers’ side in several joint-employer cases. The big one to watch, though, involves McDonald’s, and it’s still being challenged in court. In the meantime, there are currently two vacancies on the NLRB that President Trump gets to fill, assuming he ever gets around to it.
They also need to roll back the Obama overtime rules, which are also tied up in court.
PS. On a sad note, one of the great innovators of the 20th century passed away:
Sam Panopoulos, considered to be the creator of the Hawaiian pizza, died on Thursday at the age of 83. A Greek immigrant to Canada, Panopoulos and his two brothers ran a number of restaurants in Ontario. Satellite Restaurant, where Panopoulos started serving pizzas in the 1960s, is the spot where he came up with the controversial assemblage of toppings. Depending on whom you talk you, it was either in a moment of divine inspiration or devilish blasphemy that Panopoulos first put pineapple on pizza, telling the BBC just this year that the crew did it “just for the fun of it.”
I say “divine inspiration”.
PS. I also have a new post on labor shortages at Econlog.