The National Labor Relations Board on Thursday defended its theory that companies can be classified as joint employers if they “share or codetermine” the employment terms of a group of workers, Bloomberg BNA reports. Browning-Ferris Industries of California urged the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to reject the new NLRB standard, which critics have called a threat to franchising and other business models. The NLRB adopted the standard in a 2015 ruling that Browning-Ferris was a joint employer with Leadpoint, a staffing firm that provided workers to the recycling company. The board overruled 30-year-old precedents that companies should share legal responsibility for employees only if they exercise “direct and immediate control” over the workers.