NLRB

Subscribe to NLRB

The new Republican-led National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has wasted little time in reconsidering decisions made during the Obama Administration. In its Boeing, Inc., decision, announced on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017, the board overturned its Lutheran Heritage Village-Livonia decision that has guided its evaluation of employee handbook policies for the past 13 years and most recently has come under intense criticism from the employer community for chipping away at common employee handbook policies.

Continue Reading NLRB establishes new standard for evaluating employee handbook policies

Peter Robb is President Trump’s new General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). He was confirmed by the Senate in November. The General Counsel is the top lawyer guiding NLRB enforcement activity. Direction from the General Counsel’s office influences how NLRB Regional Directors enforce the law and has a significant impact on legal issues facing union, as well as non-union, companies. In a memo issued on December 1 to all of the NLRB Regional Offices around the country, Mr. Robb signaled his intention to systematically change many of the more controversial labor law enforcement initiates pursued by the NLRB during the Obama administration.
Continue Reading New top lawyer for NLRB signals change

Many thanks to Arslan Sheikh for his assistance in preparing this post.

Presume your workplace is non-union. You are interviewing an employee about facts that might lead to disciplining her. She tells you she wants a co-worker to sit in on the interview as her representative to advise her. The lawyers that advise the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are taking the position that you have to allow it.

Last week, the office of the general counsel to the NLRB issued an advice memorandum that has significant implications for all non-union employers. The memo concludes that an employee in a non-union workplace should be entitled to co-worker representation during an investigatory interview by the company. This is contrary to existing NLRB precedent which holds that representation rights like this do not apply where there is no union representative. As explained below, whether the general counsel’s advice becomes law remains to be seen. But in the meantime, employers are wise to be aware of this advice memo because it will likely influence the way NLRB regional offices act in enforcement proceedings at least for now. Refusing an employee’s request for representation in an interview might result in a local NLRB office issuing a complaint and forcing the employer to fight it out in a hearing.
Continue Reading Non-union employers may have to allow employees “representation” in some investigation interviews

Many thanks to Arslan Sheikh for his assistance in preparing this post.

Last week, President Trump nominated Peter Robb, a management-side labor attorney, to serve as general counsel to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). As the top lawyer for the NLRB, the general counsel has a great many responsibilities, which include giving advice to the regional offices of the NLRB concerning enforcement issues. The advice is often communicated in advice memoranda. These advice memos are critical because they advise the regional offices on how to interpret and to enforce labor law. It is the regional offices that process unfair labor practice charges and union representation petitions. As a result, the office of the general counsel can have a significant influence on what employers can expect to face in NLRB enforcement proceedings.

If Robb is confirmed by the Senate, which is likely, he will take over when current General Counsel Richard Griffin’s four-year term expires on Oct. 31, 2017. Based on his professional background and experience, there is reason to expect that Robb will take a more employer-friendly position on many labor law issues than his predecessors did during the Obama administration. For example, Robb has been critical of the NLRB’s efforts to shorten the timeframe in which an employer can react to a union election petition.
Continue Reading President Trump nominates Peter Robb to serve as general counsel to the National Labor Relations Board

In an en banc decision, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned an earlier panel decision, which we reported on here, in MikLin Enterprises Inc. v. NLRB, in which the panel had upheld the NLRB’s finding that a Jimmy John’s franchisee had violated the rights of its employees under the National Labor Relations Act, when it fired them for hanging posters at their shops that suggested that the customers could be eating sandwiches that were made by sick employees in an effort to pressure the franchisee to adopt a paid sick leave policy.

In the en banc decision, the full 8th Circuit refused to enforce the NLRB’s unfair labor practice finding and held that an employer may fire an employee for “making a sharp, public, disparaging attack upon the quality of the company’s product and its business policies, in a manner reasonably calculated to harm the company’s reputation and reduce its income.” The court emphasized that “allegations that a food industry employer is selling unhealthy food are likely to have a devastating impact on its business” and that the fired MikLin employees made a conscious decision maximize this effect by choosing to launch their attack during flu season. The court added:

“By targeting the food product itself, employees disparaged MikLin in a manner likely to outlive, and also unnecessary to aid, the labor dispute. Even if MikLin granted paid sick leave, the image of contaminated sandwiches made by employees who chose to work while sick was not one that would easily dissipate.”

Continue Reading Full Eighth Circuit upholds employee terminations in Jimmy John’s paid sick leave dispute

On June 7, 2017 the Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, announced that the US Department of Labor (DOL) was withdrawing its 2015 and 2016 guidance on joint employment and independent contractors. The Obama-era guidance expanded how joint employment was defined to include employers that have indirect or potential control over the terms and conditions of…

Employers beware…it may be time yet again to review your handbooks to make sure that your policies do not violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) judge recently ordered several Verizon Wireless stores to strike certain employee handbook policies.  In all, the decision means Verizon Wireless must strike 10 employee handbook policies that violated the NLRA because they could be read to chill employees’ rights to engage in protected concerted activity.

Section 7 of the NLRA grants employees the right to engage in concerted activity for the purpose of mutual aid and protection. Section 8(a)(1) of the Act makes it unlawful for an employer to interfere with, restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of their Section 7 rights.Continue Reading “Can you hear me now?” NLRB judge calls on Verizon to remove restrictive handbook policies

In a follow up to its Whole Foods Market, Inc. decision, which found unlawful an employer policy prohibiting workplace recordings by employees without prior management approval, an NLRB panel majority in Mercedes Benz U.S. International, Inc. denied the General Counsel’s motion for summary judgment on a similar “no recording” policy. According to the majority, Mercedes was entitled to a hearing, which would provide an opportunity to present evidence regarding its business justifications for the policy, and about whether the policy was communicated or applied in a manner that clearly conveyed an intent to permit protected activity.

Member Pearce dissented, arguing that the employer’s policy which prohibited the use of cameras and video recording devices in the plant without prior authorization, was facially overbroad and did not provide any exceptions for protected concerted activity. As such, according to Member Pearce, the policy tends to impermissibly chill employee expression and therefore was unlawful regardless of the employer’s intent in adopting and implementing the policy and regardless of whether employees actually interpreted the policy as restricting their Section 7 rights.Continue Reading NLRB panel majority upholds employer right to justify “no recording” policy; denies general counsel summary judgment motion

As he tends to remind us on a regular basis, Donald Trump won the presidential election back in November 2016. But that doesn’t mean that National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) policy turns on a dime. The Board has only three members at this time with Member Philip Miscimarra (R) in the role of Acting Chairman still outnumbered by Members Pearce (D) and McFerran (D). With confirmations of even cabinet level nominations still pending, it could be well into 2018 before a full complement of Board Members are in place and the Republicans take the majority.

Although the Board’s recent decision in Dish Network, LLC probably would have yielded the same result with a full Trump Board, Acting Chairman Miscimarra’s concurring opinion likely signals a future relaxing of the Board’s standards for evaluating whether certain employer policies and employment agreements violate employee Section 7 rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). In Dish Network, the Board concluded that the employer’s mandatory arbitration policy and agreement violated Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA. Following its jurisprudence from prior cases decided during the Obama Administration, the Board concluded that the arbitration agreement constituted an 8(a)(1) violation because it “specifies in broad terms that it applies to ‘any claim, controversy and/or dispute between them, arising out of and/or in any way related to Employee’s application for employment, employment and/or termination of employment, whenever and wherever brought.’”
Continue Reading NLRB’s Dish Network decision: A sign of things to come for employer arbitration agreements?

Right-to-work laws limit the “union security” a union can achieve in a collective bargaining agreement with an employer. In states with no right-to-work law, unions can bargain for contract provisions requiring that, as a condition of continued employment, employees must either join the union or at least pay monthly fees to the union for its collective bargaining efforts. In states that have right-to-work laws, that sort of union security provision is illegal. There are 26 states with right-to-work laws currently. Ohio does not have a right-to-work law.
Continue Reading The door may be open for county or municipal government “right-to-work” laws in Ohio