McDonald’s Italy CBA Extended to 50 Franchisors Covering 14,000 Workers

Fifty franchisors operating McDonald’s restaurants in Italy agreed at the start of 2026 to apply a collective bargaining agreement that was negotiated last October for the company’s directly employed staff. The move brings roughly 14,000 franchised workers under the same supplemental contract framework that covers about 4,000 directly employed McDonald’s workers and signals a push by unions to reduce fragmentation across the fast-food sector.

The October 2025 agreement was signed by three unions - Filcams CGIL, Fisascat CISL and Uiltucs - after several months of union action and negotiation. Unions framed the expansion to franchised outlets as a deliberate strategy to overcome the dispersal of workers that characterizes the franchising model. “This is a shared commitment aimed at improving working conditions so they are fairer and more equitable,” the unions said through the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations. “What has been achieved,” they concluded, “is a first step that can serve as a model for expanding supplemental collective bargaining within the franchising system.”

Unions say the franchising-based business model, adopted by nearly all fast food companies in Italy and globally, has long been viewed as a structural obstacle to improving working conditions largely because it fragments the workforce. Their stated priorities for the extended contract include higher wages, better scheduling of shifts, improved work-life balance and increases in working hours for part-time employees. They have set a target to extend the supplemental contract during 2026 to franchise employees who have not yet joined.

The extension comes against a regulatory backdrop in which the Italian Competition and Market Authority opened an investigation in July 2021 into aspects of McDonald’s franchise terms. McDonald’s submitted undertakings that were published and market-tested by the authority, and later revised franchise contracts. “The Authority found that the changes and commitments proposed by McDonald's Development Italy were entirely suitable to remove the concerns of abuse of economic dependence pursuant to Article 9 of Law 198/1992, and consequently closed the proceedings without a finding of infringement,” a summary of that process states. Those contractual revisions included obligations on local advertising spend, non-compete clauses, supplier specifications and resale restrictions for equipment.

The agreement’s immediate practical impact for workers will depend on the unpublished details of the October 2025 supplemental contract and on how the extensions are implemented at franchise level. The names of the 50 franchisors and the legal form of their commitments have not been disclosed, and McDonald’s Development Italy and McDonald’s Italia have not provided a formal statement in the materials reviewed.

For workers and union organizers, the expansion offers a concrete pathway to standardize terms across corporate and franchised outlets, but enforcement and wider uptake will determine whether the step reduces the long-standing fragmentation that unions say has limited bargaining power. The unions aim to press the process forward through 2026, making the next months decisive for extension, compliance and whether the model spreads across other franchised fast-food operations.