Nonfiction
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PUBLISHED
©2026
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xxii, 301 pages ; 23 cm
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Preface -- Hierarchies of control -- The invention of control -- "You can't give them an inch" : mechanisms of franchisor control -- Owners, operators : franchising's tenant entrepreneurs -- The end of liability -- The franchise comes of age -- Stealing horses, aligning interests -- "Synonymous with evil" : the IFA confronts the Fight for $15 -- Epilogue
"Franchising is everywhere in the United States. From ride-sharing apps to fast food to poultry farming, millions of small businesses are controlled by systems of oversight-franchisors--designed to maximize the efficiencies and profits of their franchisees. Their controls include not only branding and operations, but wages and worker advancement. What else are they doing? In this revelatory work, economist Brian Callaci shows how franchising-ostensibly an economic system for aligning interests between franchisor and franchisee--has advanced all manner of legal and economic sins on the US economy and labor force. As a business model, franchises produce structural protections for owners from workers, especially in matters related to wages and worker organizing. The results have been unfettered growth of some of America's most recognizable businesses, at the aggregate expense of America's workers. Telling for the first time the history of this business movement--initially struck down by US courts, then revived over decades by some of America's most recognizable entrepreneurs--Callaci's story is remarkable in its scale, synthesis, and importance. Chains of Command is an urgent and erudite history of how the US labor market was tamed"-- Provided by publisher