Franchisors must exercise caution in how they support franchisees on the labor front. In recent years, the franchise world has been upended by an aggressive, anti-franchise, NLRB. 2014 saw the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issue a series of rulings that held that franchisors might be the joint employers of their franchisees’ employees. A franchise is a trademark license that extends use of a brand while shifting costs of overhead such as labor to an independent contractor. The idea that the employees of a franchise may also be the employees of the franchisor defeats the purpose and value of the… Read more