McDonald’s has spent the past couple of years trying to win back customers who have lost interest in the Golden Arches in favor of fast-casual eateries. In 2015 the company reduced the number of its U.S. stores for the first time in decades and has since deployed different strategies, with mixed results in an attempt to resume a level of growth that’s similar to what it once had, which turned it into the world’s biggest restaurant chain.

Lately McDonald’s has been facing a labor-relations challenge — one on which it could receive some help from fast food industry ally President Donald Trump if the White House moves quickly to fill vacancies at the National Labor Relations Board. The federal agency is responsible for ruling on collective bargaining agreements and allegations of unfair labor practices. Under former president Barack Obama, the NLRB made some major decisions in favor of labor unions. Republicans are salivating at the prospect of hamstringing future pro-labor decisions.

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“There have been instances in the past, in the 1980s, where new board majorities sought to retrieve cases that were pending in the circuit court,” William Gould, a former NLRB chairman and professor emeritus at Stanford Law School, told Salon. “It’s possible that they could do that after they get board members in place.”

Even if a future Republican-controlled NLRB fails to unwind the court hearing, it could accept new cases and rule differently on them than the Obama-era board did, thus overturning past rulings, Gould added. The NLRB could also disrupt the current process of determining if McDonald’s is a joint employer.

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Gould said Trump’s nomination of Andrew Puzder, the chairman of the company that owns Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., to head the Department of Labor shows the direction Trump will take with agencies responsible for enforcing fair labor conditions.

“The new president has selected a secretary of labor nominee who is hostile to labor regulations generally, and so I think once appointees are in place at these regulatory agencies we’ll see appointees who contain a similar philosophy,” Gould said.