“A burger-flipper doesn’t actually work for the company whose logo decorates his uniform”

Over the past year, thousands of fast-food workers have staged protests and rallies for a higher hourly wage. As they see it, big corporations like McDonald’s and Domino’s can well afford to pay workers more. […] [But] corporations and even the federal government have learned to use “suppliers, subsidiaries, franchisees, contractors, to avoid responsibility” for the welfare of those at the bottom of what business schools call the “value chain.” The low- wage jobs are offloaded onto smaller entities. Making things worse for workers is a lack of opportunities to move up the corporate ladder, since a burger-flipper doesn’t actually work for the company whose logo decorates his uniform.

-Via Longreads, this short piece at Pacific Standard about fast-food franchising is pretty nuts: a Quizno’s franchise owner mentioned the unforgiving franchise system in his suicide note, and when a group of franchisees reposted this note online, Quizno’s fired all of them. [PS]