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Continuing a trend towards reversal of case precedent, the NLRB has issued two decisions important to companies with union contracts. In Valley Hospital Medical Center, the Board considered whether an employer has the right to stop making dues deductions from employee paychecks after a collective bargaining agreement with the union expires. Dues deductions in collective bargaining agreements are common. Unions bargain aggressively for them because these provisions require the employer to automatically deduct union dues from employee paychecks and submit them directly to the union.
Continue Reading NLRB shift on two important issues for union companies

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) governs certain rights of workers in union and non-union workplaces. NLRB cases impact such things as employee rights to complain about working conditions on behalf of oneself and others and the right to communicate to co-workers about interest in unionization. As a result, trends in NLRB decisions are important to all companies, union and non-union.
Continue Reading Active NLRB is reversing many trends; union and non-union companies need to be aware

The National Labor Relations Board has issued a final rule governing joint-employer status under the National Labor Relations Act. This rule, published in the Federal Register on February 26, 2020, will take effect in late April 2020.

To be a joint employer under the final rule, a business must possess and exercise substantial direct and immediate control over one or more essential terms and conditions of employment of another employer’s employees.Continue Reading The new NLRB joint-employer rule

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) invited interested parties to submit feedback about when an employee’s offensive or inappropriate workplace comments should lose the protection of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Specifically, the NLRB is inviting employers and other parties to submit briefing about whether it should reconsider its standards for determining whether Section 7 of the NLRA protects employees who make “profane outbursts and offensive statements of a racial or sexual nature…during the course of otherwise protected activity.” By way of background, Section 7 of the NLRA gives employees the right to engage in “concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” That can include raising work-related disputes or complaints. This right extends to all non-management employees, not just those represented by a union. But what if the employee raising specomplaints uses obscene or otherwise offensive language directed at a supervisor? In some NLRB cases, employee outbursts that have included offensive language have been shielded from punishment by the employer because the language was considered a part of protected speech.
Continue Reading NLRB invites businesses to provide feedback on when an employee’s offensive comments should lose the protection of federal labor law

On Sept. 6, 2019, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) granted a significant win to employers, ruling that businesses can lawfully limit the rights of nonemployee union supporters to access company property that is otherwise open to the public. In a 3-1 decision, the Board ruled that Kroger did not violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) when it removed nonemployee union supporters from the parking lot of a Kroger store. The decision overruled a 2016 ruling by an NLRB administrative judge that Kroger had illegally barred two nonemployee representatives of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union from petitioning customers in the parking lot of a store in Portsmouth Virginia. The nonemployee union representatives were there to solicit customer support for the union’s protest over a decision to close the store and relocate employees to a different location 25 miles away.

The administrative law judge who initially heard the case ruled in favor of the union, noting that the grocery store’s managers had previously allowed several charitable entities to distribute literature and sell goods outside the store’s entrance. Applying Sandusky Mall Co., 329 NLRB 618 (1999), the administrative law judge held that Kroger violated the NLRA and discriminated against the union by regularly granting access to company property to civic, charitable and promotional activities by nonemployees while prohibiting nonemployee union representatives from petitioning on company property.
Continue Reading NLRB sides with Kroger’s action to remove union representatives from company property

The decision to classify a worker as an independent contractor, rather than as an employee, carries significant legal implications. Misclassifying employees as independent contractors can result in employer liability for unpaid payroll taxes, unpaid unemployment and workers’ compensation premiums, and responsibility for failure to provide the various rights afforded under employment laws to employees but…

On Jan. 25, 2019, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) addressed its independent contractor test in a case involving airport shuttle drivers for the franchise, SuperShuttle. The SuperShuttle DFW, Inc. decision overruled the NLRB’s 2014 decision in FedEx Home Delivery, which the Board criticized as incorrectly limiting the significance of a worker’s entrepreneurial opportunity for economic gain in determining independent contractor status.
Continue Reading NLRB overrules Obama-era precedent for independent contractor test

The Obama-era NLRB sometimes gave employers fits with decisions and guidance concerning employer work rules. It was common for the Obama-era Board to strike down fairly common, neutral work rules, often based on the idea that employees might interpret the rules to restrict employee rights. It did not take long for Trump-era NLRB appointees, however, to put their stamp on National Labor Relations Act law (see our article about some early actions by Trump NLRB appointees). The current members of the NLRB and the NLRB General Counsel are clearly inclined to give employers more latitude when drafting work rules. Following are some examples of the NLRB’s change in direction.
Continue Reading More news from the NLRB on work rules

On Monday, May 21, 2018, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 5-to-4 decision that employers may require workers to accept individual arbitration for wage and hour and other workplace disputes rather than banding together to pursue their claims in class actions in federal or state courts. The Court’s decision in Lewis v. Epic Sys. Corp. overturns the position of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and resolves a split among federal courts of appeals. The case is one of the most important employment law cases to be decided by the Supreme Court in the past decade and could affect millions of U.S. workers and their employers.
Continue Reading U.S. Supreme Court rules that mandatory, individual arbitration of employment disputes trumps employees’ rights to participate in class action lawsuits

After Republicans regained control of the majority seats on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or the board) for the first time in nearly nine years, the majority has swiftly reset the board’s tone. Recently, the NLRB has been busy taking steps to undo some of the more labor and employee friendly standards and opinions that were implemented under the Obama Administration. The result is a return to what many employers would consider to be a common sense approach.
Continue Reading NLRB discards Obama-era decisions