The National Labor Relations Board (you know, the one where the Supreme Court smacked down the president for making illegal appointments) has decided that McDonalds is a “joint-employer” with all of its franchisees.

The unions were pushing this to make it easier for them to unionize fast food workers.

“It’s time the company put those same powers [to control franchisees] to work to do something about the fact that its workers are living in poverty,” said Kendall Fells, organizing director of Fast Food Forward, president of the Fast Food Workers committee and a former SEIU organizer. I’m sure he feels really smug about his side’s victory against the great behemoth of fast food.

Now we come to the reality side of unintended consequences. If this ruling is allowed to stand (and Mickey D’s has vowed to fight it), then the unions will close down a promising avenue for the workers they claim to represent for economic mobility.

Guess who becomes McDonald’s franchisees? People who work their way up from crew to manager (or district manager), and who invest their own money into their first store. Then they invest in a second store. And another. Through all of that hard work and wise investing is real prosperity. Not the false prosperity of a bump in the minimum wage that will be eaten the next year by rising prices, but the sustained prosperity that will not only change the lives of the franchisees, but their entire family tree.

But, today the workers won. Hurray.