NLRB Charge Filed Against Mullica Hill McDonald's Franchise, Case 04-CA-382574

The NLRB recorded a signed charge against employer on March 10 targeting Mullica Hill 27580 LLC, the entity that operates a McDonald's franchise in Mullica Hill, New Jersey, under the Smolar Group LLC umbrella. The case, numbered 04-CA-382574, appears on the federal labor board's docket as a "Signed Charge Against Employer," though the publicly available docket entry does not detail the specific allegations, identify the charging party, or indicate whether McDonald's USA, LLC has been named as a respondent.

The charge lands more than a decade after the NLRB mounted one of its most ambitious actions against the McDonald's franchise system. In December 2014, the Office of the General Counsel issued complaints against McDonald's franchisees and McDonald's USA, LLC as alleged joint employers, citing violations tied to employees who participated in nationwide fast food worker protests over wages and working conditions. Of 291 charges filed since November 2012, the NLRB found 86 meritorious enough to warrant complaints, even as settlement talks with the company proved "largely unsuccessful." Litigation in that wave was set to begin March 30, 2015, spanning the jurisdictions of six regional offices, with consolidated hearings organized across locations in the Northeast, Midwest, and West.

The new Mullica Hill charge is a discrete docket entry with a Region 4 case number prefix, distinct from that earlier multi-location action. Whether it echoes the wage and organizing retaliation allegations that drove the 2014 complaints, or involves a different category of labor law violation entirely, is not established by the docket alone.

To get the full picture, the charging document, the sections of the National Labor Relations Act being cited, and any response from Smolar Group LLC would all need to surface. None of those are public yet. The NLRB's investigation under Region 4 is, at this stage, just beginning.