“Welcome to McDonald’s…May I Take Your Cashier?” — A Review of Recent Franchise No-Poach Class Action Lawsuits

For years, franchise businesses in various industries have included “no-poach” provisions in franchise agreements that restrict employees from moving among locations within the same franchise system. While these provisions had gone largely unnoticed, more recently they have garnered much attention, with economists pointing to them as a possible source of wage stagnation and antitrust practitioners challenging them as illegal restraints of trade. Around the same time state attorneys general s