NLRB unelected rule makers will do for the service industry what they did to the auto industry in America.

Obama's Labor Board: Working For The Teamsters

08/28/2015 06:48 PM ET

Fast-food employees rally outside a McDonald's in Atlanta on May 15, 2014. AP View Enlarged Image

Business: A National Labor Relations Board ruling made Thursday is a gift to unions and a boot on the neck of independent businesses. Welcome to another chapter in President Obama's remaking of America.

Three members of the unelected five-person NLRB acted in exactly the way that unions wanted them to. They decided, against decades of history, that Browning-Ferris Industries is a "joint employer" with a temporary staffing agency that provides workers for the Houston-based waste-management company's facility in California.

The ruling makes it easier for the Teamsters to organize the California workers, something it had reportedly been unsuccessful in doing.

The unions want big businesses to be defined as joint employers with small businesses, such as Leadpoint Business Services, provider of the California workers, and franchises that operate restaurants.

They can more easily drag large corporations such as McDonald's and other fast-food companies to the bargaining table and complain to them about alleged labor violations if they are considered joint employers.

The bigger companies also have more money, making them fat targets for trial lawyers who are always looking for someone to sue.

Up until this ruling, which is likely to be reviewed by the courts, a company was considered a joint employer only when it had the authority to hire and fire workers. It needed "direct and immediate" control over them.

While union bosses celebrate the ruling, small businesses are confronting an upturned world.

Under this new definition, a company such as Browning-Ferris has less incentive to go through a small business such as Leadpoint if it's going to have all the legal exposure it would have if it had hired the workers itself. That makes subcontractors less attractive.

Franchisees could be the biggest victim of the ruling. Beth Milito, senior legal counsel for the National Federation of Independent Business, says tens of thousands of fast-food and chain restaurants "are owned and operated independently of the big corporations," and "if those corporations are suddenly responsible for the franchise employees, they'll be forced to exert more control over the franchisees."

They might even "eliminate the franchise model entirely and take direct control over the locations."

Franchises that do survive will have a new set of problems to deal with. Unionization will force them to either raise prices to keep up with an increased payroll, which hurts business, or cut employee costs through layoffs and hiring freezes, which will hurt the very people this ruling supposedly helps.

Another option is automation. Small businesses faced with bankrupting labor costs will put machines to work instead of men. And unlike men, those machines don't pay union dues. Nor can they stage walkouts or make exorbitant demands. So much for entry-level jobs.

These are factors that Obama's NLRB should have considered before it did the union bosses' bidding.

But political agendas, such as the remaking of a country, often get in the way of clear thinking.