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The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that McDonald’s could be treated as a joint-employer and share responsibility for the working practices and general welfare of all franchise employees.

McDonald’s remains one of the biggest franchise operators in the US today, with up to 14,000 restaurants in the US alone owned and operated by franchises.

Something of a blessing and a curse rolled into one, the fact that around 90% of all McDonald’s outlets in America are not in fact directly operated by the company itself is often blamed for the somewhat inconsistent standards experienced from branch to branch. What’s more, it’s also been suggested that working practices are also anything but consistent across the US and the way in which the firm is for the most part run by franchises makes it somewhat difficult to properly monitor and control.

That could all be set to change going forward however as the US National Labor Relations Board has said that when and where a franchisee of McDonald’s slips up in any way, some of the responsibility and blame could be shared by the company itself. It didn’t take long for McDonald’s representatives to confirm its intent to oppose the proposed measures, though the response from labor advocates has been universally positive.

If the ruling is enforced, employees working for franchised McDonald’s outlets could find themselves classified as working under two employers at the same time – the franchisee and the larger McDonald’s corporation.

Inconsistencies in service standards are of course far from the root of the debate in this instance. Instead, the ruling by the labor regulator represents a response to almost 200 complaints pertaining to unfair working practices files by employees of McDonald’s franchise outlets over the last two years. Those involved accused their employers of taking punitive measures in the aftermath of large-scale protests, where fast food workers demanded more agreeable working conditions and better rates of pay.

To date, 43 of the complaints have been upheld or deemed viable.

“If the parties cannot reach settlement in these cases, complaints will be issued and McDonald’s, USA, LLC will be named as a joint employer respondent,” read the ruling reached Tuesday by the NLRB.

McDonald’s has long been accused by many of its workers are labor groups alike of turning a blind eye to what goes on behind the doors of its franchise units – a wholly unacceptable policy when nine out of every ten McDonald’s outlets is franchisee owned and run

The ruling was labeled a “huge victory” by the Service Employees International Union.

Of course, the same cannot be said for the folks at McDonald’s HQ who have hit back at the ruling and insist it will be fought.

“McDonald’s also believes that this decision changes the rules for thousands of small businesses, and goes against decades of established law regarding the franchise model in the United States,” wrote Heather Smedstad, McDonald’s USA senior vice president of human resources.

And they’re not alone in their resistance either, as The International Franchise Association is also convinced that the ruling will deliver a hammer-blow to thousands of businesses across the US.

“If franchisors are joint employers with their franchisees, these thousands of small business owners would lose control of the operations and equity they worked so hard to build,” read a statement from the group.

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Some of the world’s biggest companies operating out of Silicon Valley comprise workforces that disproportionately favor males, whites and Asians. Having recently disclosed their workforce diversity statistics for the very first time, a number of firms including Google, Facebook and Twitter have been left with little choice but to admit significant changes are needed.

Apple is yet to publish its own diversity report, though Tim Cook promised than the information would soon be made available when he was interviewed in early June.

Equal opportunities campaigners have unsurprisingly lashed out at the companies at the center of the scandal, insisting that insufficient efforts have been made to bring balance to the workforce. However, there are those that remain adamant that those showing such unequal preference to specific ethic groups and genders are in fact dealing themselves a bum hand.

According to USA Today for example, those without an at least modestly diverse workplace run the risk of losing the respect of consumers and generally finding themselves out of touch with an increasingly diverse general public.

Here’s what that company’s at the center of the debate had to say about their own diversity discrepancies:

Google

“We’re not where we want to be when it comes to diversity,” was Google’s response.

“And it is hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts. All of our efforts, including going public with these numbers, are designed to help us recruit and develop the world’s most talented and diverse people.”

Facebook

“Research also shows that diverse teams are better at solving complex problems and enjoy more dynamic workplaces,” wrote Facebook’s Maxine Williams.

“So at Facebook we’re serious about building a workplace that reflects a broad range of experience, thought, geography, age, background, gender, sexual orientation, language, culture and many other characteristics. As these numbers show, we have more work to do – a lot more.”

Twitter

“A Twitter that we can be proud of is diverse, and it’s inclusive…We are keenly aware that Twitter is part of an industry that is marked by dramatic imbalances in diversity — and we are no exception,” said Twitter executive Janet Van Huysse

“By becoming more transparent with our employee data, open in dialogue throughout the company and rigorous in our recruiting…we are making diversity an important business issue for ourselves.”

Yahoo

“Here at Yahoo we are committed to attracting, developing and retaining a diverse workforce,” said Yahoo’s Jacqueline Reses.

“Overall, our goal at Yahoo is to create a workplace culture that attracts and retains all talents, regardless of background, and to help our people grow to their full potential.”

LinkedIn

“True inclusion is something that can only be achieved through a workforce that reflects the rich diversity of our member base, and this is something we strive to do in all of our hiring efforts,” explained Pat Wadors of LinkedIn.

“My role as Vice President of Global Talent affords me the unique opportunity to make a positive change in closing the diversity and skills gaps in today’s workforce.”

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General Motors has revealed its second-quarterly revenue performance for 2014, which unsurprisingly does not make for the most reassuring reading. Having been hit with a bill far in excess of $1.2 billion following an unprecedented spat of vehicle recalls, total Q2 income came in at a comparatively paltry $200 million.

By contrast, the same three-month period in 2013 saw GM come out with $1.2 billion – at the time facing a recall bill of just $100 million.

The bad news doesn’t end their either as on top of the funds already forked out in the wake of such gigantic recalls, GM execs tipped a further $400 million bill to pay compensation to those affected by the spate of faulty ignition switches that were linked to several serious accidents. This is the first time the automaker has put an estimate on how much it expects to pay out in compensation, though admitted that without a cap on the figure it might go as high as $600 million.

On a slightly more positive note however, total revenues for the quarter were in fact up a little compared to last year. Q2 2014 brought GM total income of $39.6 billion as opposed to the $39.1 billion of last year, suggesting that the world’s confidence in the brand may not have been shaken quite so damagingly.

“Our underlying business performance in the first half of the year was strong as we grew our revenue on improved pricing and solid new vehicle launches,” said Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors.

According to Brian Johnson of Barclays, the global recall nightmare GM has faced over recent months is already being forgotten by the masses, paving the way for a bright and stable future.

“The recall is increasingly fading to the background,” he said, insisting that investors were likely to look more at the firm’s improved overall revenues than the unfortunate recall bill.

For the crucial North American market, GM’s pre-tax earnings came out at $1.4 billion after factoring in the $1 billion cost of domestic recalls issued. This is of course a marked decline from the $2 billion receded last year, though remains impressive given the turbulence GM has experience this year so far.

As for the future outlook, GM is confident that things will return to normal by way of both recall costs and revenues throughout the rest of the year, though didn’t go so far as to make public any exact targets or projections. There are those however that insist it is simply unfeasible to assume that overall GM vehicle sales will not be adversely affected by the negative global publicity the spate of recalls triggered.

“GM is going to take a hit because of the recalls that have been happening over the last several months,” warned Kelly Blue Book analyst Akshay Anand .

“The question is, how much? Sales haven’t slowed as much as many people expected, thanks in part to a clear recall strategy from GM as it relates to public perception, as well as the introduction of solid, new product.”

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Over 3.4 million long-term unemployed individuals may have dim hope for another bout in the battle to extend unemployment benefits.  Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Dean Heller (R-NV) have proposed the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2014.  The plan would extend benefits for five months for those who currently qualify, but would not be retroactive for those who stopped receiving EUC or exhausted their state claims after December 28, 2013.

The proposal has some bi-partisan support, but still little hope of being passed.  Republican Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey is in support of the bill, and stated in a press release, “I see no reason why a bipartisan solution cannot be found that provides a critical lifeline to those in need without adding to the deficit.” Some counties in his state of New Jersey have been battling unemployment rates in the double digits.  Other co-sponsors include Dan Kilder, D-Mich., and Representative Chris Smith, a Republican.  Missing from this list is Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, who supported the previous bill but has not supported this one.  Less support certainly does not bode well for the potential passage of the bill.

One glaring oversight which calls into question the future of this bill is the fact that House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has flatly refused to accept any proposal lacking a plan for job creation, a plan the current bill lacks.  Newly elected House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is also not expected to present the issue for risk of dividing his caucus. Millions of people and their families share in Senator Jack Reed’s sentiment that hopefully“…the House Republican leadership will start paying attention to the American people and will finally allow an up-or-down vote on this bill.”

Congressman Dan Kilder (D-Mi.) introduced the bill Wednesday to the House of Representatives. It is expected to meet further disapproval in the House as it does not include unrelated legislation regarding the Keystone XL Pipeline nor the repealing of certain parts of Obamacare.  The extension plan is projected to cost $10 billion to extend benefits for five months.  It would be paid by using the previously suggested extension of user fees through 2024 and pension smoothing through 2021.

Pension smoothing is a process that allows employers to pay smaller amounts into employee’s retirement pension plans, basically the equivalent to smaller tax deductions.  Eventually, they would be required to start paying more.

Despite the drop in filing of unemployment claims, which is at its lowest since May 2007, food stamps, or SNAP, recipients are at the highest they have ever been.  The poverty rate has remained constant over the last two years, overwhelmingly among low-wage workers and children.  Currently, over 15 % of the population is drawing SNAP benefits. Rising prices in gas, food, and the cost of living point to a looming inflation that may be agitated by Congress’s inability to act on behalf of the long-term unemployed. Each day more and more people will exhaust their state claims and find themselves and their families facing poverty.

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Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) announced Thursday morning that its present Chief Executive Officer, Alan R. Mulally, will be stepping down as CEO and will be replaced by Mark Fields effective July 1.

Aside from replacing Mulally, 68, as CEO, the 53-year-old Fields will also serve as President of Ford Motor Co., and will be elected as a member of Ford’s board of directors upon the incumbent chief executive’s retirement.  In a prepared statement, Ford Executive Chairman William C. (Bill) Ford Jr. talked about the upcoming transition to a new chief executive, highlighting Fields’ achievements as a Ford executive.  “From the first day we discussed Ford’s transformation eight years ago, Alan and I agreed that developing the next generation of leaders and ensuring an orderly CEO succession were among our highest priorities,” he said. “Mark has transformed several of our operations around the world into much stronger businesses during his 25 years at Ford. Now, Mark is ready to lead our company into the future as CEO.”

Mulally will be stepping down to retire following a 45-year career, including the last eight as Ford’s CEO.  He was instrumental in helping Ford recover from some tough times following the global economic recession, and has also pushed Ford to remain as one of the world’s most popular and successful automakers.  Thanks to Mullaly’s One Ford initiative, the company has been “in the black”, or achieved profitability for 19 straight quarters, and has also offered consumers with what is arguably the most impressive roster of Ford vehicles in the company’s long and proud history.

“Alan deservedly will be long remembered for engineering one of the most successful business turnarounds in history,” added Bill Ford as he talked about Mulally’s remarkable achievement of helping Ford weather the storms of the Great Recession. “Under Alan’s leadership, Ford not only survived the global economic crisis, it emerged as one of the world’s strongest auto companies. We always will be grateful to Alan for his leadership, compelling vision and for fostering a culture of working together that will serve our company for decades to come.”

As for Mullaly’s replacement, Fields was named Chief Operating Officer of Ford in December 2012.  As COO, Fields’ job description included presiding over Ford’s weekly Business Plan Review meetings, which serve as a weekly update of sorts to determine the progress of the above mentioned One Ford initiative, and to discuss the latest developments in the automotive industry and the broader global business scene.  Prior to becoming COO, Fields was executive vice president and president of Ford’s Americas arm from October 2005 to December 2012.  This was where he had helped Ford’s North American business recover from record losses during the recession, and generate record profits in each of the most recent four years.  He had also served as the architect of Ford’s turnaround in the European market, and helped the carmaker re-launch its operations in Argentina, all before he headed The Americas division.

“It has been an honor to serve and contribute to creating a viable, profitably growing company for the good of everyone associated with the Ford Motor Company,” read a statement from Mulally, as he thanked his team for the company’s success. “By working together with all of our stakeholders around the world, we now are accelerating Henry Ford’s original vision to open the highways to all mankind.  Ford’s future is so bright, and Mark – supported by an experienced and dedicated senior leadership team – is absolutely the right leader to continue to deliver on our compelling vision.”

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New Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) Chief Executive Satya Nadella took over as the company’s CEO in February, and by the look of things, the company’s prospects seem to be looking quite good, following a significant uptick in after-hours trading Thursday.

MSFT shares rallied by close to three percent in after-hours trading, moving up to $40.96, and reaching levels that have not been seen since the so-called “dot-com revolution” at the start of the 21^st century.  Microsoft shares are higher by about 8 percent since Nadella replaced Steven A. (Steve) Ballmer as chief executive, and up about 19 percent since Ballmer announced last August that he plans to retire from his post.  In all, Microsoft has assuaged investor concerns regarding flagging personal computer (PC) sales and effectively beat Wall Street’s profit estimates, thanks to its strong performance in the stock market as of late.

Experts believe investors are looking forward to Nadella’s paradigm shift, wherein he pushes Microsoft to focus on the mobile space and on cloud computing.  Typically, Microsoft has been successful in monetizing its PC business, and has done well with its Windows operating system (OS), and Nadella seems determined to look towards other potential revenue streams as he shifts from his predecessor’s vision.  He will be facing market analysts later on Thursday in what will be his first conference call.

According to FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives, the ongoing April to June quarter of 2014 is a “nice step in the right direction” for Microsoft and its new CEO.  “We would characterize these (financial) results as solid in a choppy IT spending environment,” he added.  Analysts appear to be generally impressed with the businesslike Nadella, as opposed to the flamboyant Ballmer, who had received a lot of flak from number-crunchers during his tenure as Microsoft CEO.

The fact that Nadella has sought to monetize the cloud has, in turn, helped generate revenue for Microsoft’s server software arm, while PC sales have not taken as hard a landing as analysts have expected, therefore allowing Microsoft to mitigate whatever damage there was to its financials.

In quarter one of calendar 2014, Microsoft reported a quarterly profit of $5.66 billion, which redounded to 68 cents earnings per share; this represented a slight drop from the company’s $6.05 billion profit and 72 cents earnings per share in quarter one 2013.  Q1 2014’s EPS reading was also higher than the 63 cents EPS consensus forecast, according to statistics from Thomson Reuters.  Sales was at $20.4 billion last quarter, which fell in line with analyst estimates, while PC sales were down by 4.4 percent, as tablet computers and smartphones continue to spearhead what is informally referred to as the “post-PC” revolution.

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The U.S. stock market took a hit Wednesday, following comments from new Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen that had suggested an increase in short-term interest rates about six months or so following the ceasing of economic stimulus.

In its most recent policy meeting, the Fed had decided on a paradigm shift of sorts, dropping the U.S. unemployment rate as the central bank’s primary benchmark for ascertaining the strength of the broader economy. Instead, the Fed will make use of a far wider range of statistics as variables that may or may not predicate an increase in interest rates. Most notably, stocks started dropping when Yellen clarified the “considerable period” she had referred to previously as a six-month span from the time the Fed puts an end to its bond-buying stimulus initiative to the time when it increases interest rates. The program, known colloquially as “QE3”, has been in place since September 2012, and was, up until December of last year, made to the tune of $85 billion worth of bond purchases per month.

Since the start of the year, the Fed had started “tapering” its bond purchases at a pace of $10 billion per month, and is expected to completely put an end to stimulus by the end of the year. If Yellen’s comments are to be taken literally, this could mean a rate hike sometime in quarter two 2014, which is much sooner than what most prognosticators had expected – a rate increase in the second half of 2015.  Bond purchases were recently tapered by another $10 billion from $65 billion to $55 billion per month.

“(Yellen) certainly moved it up a little bit, and I don’t think the market was expecting that at all because she is widely viewed as being more on the dovish side of the aisle than she is on the hawkish side,” postulated Clearpool Group Chief Executive Peter Kenny, echoing a common sentiment among number-crunchers. “That is not a particularly hawkish comment, but the fact of the matter is, it was not expected.”  Prior to Yellen making her comments, many had opined that any Fed policymaker comments regarding interest rate hikes need to be made with a sufficient amount of gravitas, so as not to upset world markets, including the U.S. stock market.

Statistics from BATS Global Markets show that trading volume Wednesday was light, as approximately 6 billion shares were traded in the American stock market, a slight decrease from the current average of 6.7 billion shares traded per day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 114.02 points (0.70 percent) to close Wednesday’s trading at 16,222.17, while the S&P 500 index lost 11.48 points, or 0.61 percent, and ended the day at 1,860.77. Lastly, the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite index slipped back by 25.711 points, or 0.59 percent, and closed trading at 4,307.602. The easing of geopolitical concerns had been the primary variable boosting equities at the start of the week, despite light trading volume.

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Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) enjoyed a successful initial public offering (IPO) today, as the company’s shares rose by 73 percent that had boosted its market value to about $25 billion in just a few hours.

Twitter’s amazing success in its IPO has been, for many, redolent of the so-called “dot-com” explosion, where Internet-based startup companies were at their most profitable.  However, some experts believe that there may have been too much froth in today’s IPO, excessive investor appetite that may have been for naught after all.  At the close of today’s trading, Twitter shares closed at $44.90 per share and hit a high of $50 within the day, or close to twice the IPO price of $26 that was set yesterday.  If an underwriter’s over-allotment is, just as analysts predict, exercised, that could have Twitter earning an additional $2.1 billion, thus making its IPO the second-largest Web-based stock market debut, right ahead of Facebook, Inc.’s (NASDAQ: FB), but behind that of Google, Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) IPO in 2004.  Social networking platform Twitter currently has 230 million users, and has become the predominant microblogging site and one of the most visited websites on the Internet together with Google and Facebook.

Certain analysts believe that Twitter’s IPO may be more akin to that of Google, and that it may be headed for even better days going forward as it continues to establish itself as a global advertising tool.  According to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney, Twitter users tend to search for specific people or pieces of information, and these amount to “powerful market signals” that are akin to Google’s, and are something that Facebook does not quite have as of the moment.  In the run-up to the IPO, analysts had expressed concerns that Twitter may follow in the footsteps of Facebook, whose stock prices had fallen rapidly following the initial offering.

However, other analysts feel that Twitter may have been too conservative in pricing its IPO, thus costing it more than one billion dollars.  “In my mind they certainly could’ve raised the price on this thing and gone into the low 30s,” posited O’Neil Securities director of NYSE floor division Kenneth Polcari. “From an outsider looking in I would say they were overly cautious because they didn’t want a disaster on their hands.  I’m sure the company didn’t want a Facebook debacle, I get that, but I think they were overly cautious and it cost them some money.”

Twitter had officially started in 2006, and at first, it was not all too significant on a cultural and marketing standpoint, as many felt it was limited in its scope and potentially a fad that would eventually die out.  But as more and more famous people, including celebrities and athletes, started using the service, average consumers began to see value in Twitter, using it as a way to “keep it short and sweet” when expressing one’s feelings or stating one’s observations, and reaching digital “followers” in the process.  More recently, Twitter Chief Executive Richard (Dick) Costolo had been successful in monetizing its online business, earning $168 million in revenue as of quarter three 2013, or more than twice the amount of revenue earned in the year-ago June to September quarter.