It’s on now!
Late yesterday afternoon, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a press release in which it announced that it had filed this complaint in federal court against the National Labor Relations Board to strike the Board’s election rules, passed last month, which would create faster union elections.
More on this lawsuit, after the jump…
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Cue the haters.
Following a decision last Thursday permitting employees to use company email to badmouth you and unionize, the National Labor Relations Board ended last week by passing a new rule, which, in its words, updated “its representation-case procedures to modernize and streamline the process for resolving representation disputes.”
In other words, faster union elections and more of ’em.
Details on this new rule and what employers can do about it, after the jump…
YES, THAT’S RIGHT. NO BIG DEAL.
Hey, if you’re a big employment dork like me, (vote Handbook!), you’ve already read a bunch of blog posts, and you’ll read several more about how the sky is falling after yesterday’s NLRB decision, in which the Board held that employees may use company email to discuss the terms and conditions of employment.
Yes, this decision extends to any workplace — not just unionized workplaces — that is covered by the National Labor Relations Act. And, yes, it may help your employees communicate with one another to form a union (gasp!) or otherwise discuss working conditions, but…
What if…
I’m just saying, what if you could attend an event — a free event, with breakfast — and you get to hear me speak for an hour and fifteen about social media in the workplace and other hot workplace issues, and then grill me during a Q&A?
That would suck, right? Because, apart from the breakfast, who wants to hear me speak for an hour and fifteen minutes?
So, yesterday, it was all about some House Republicans introducing legislation to constrain the enforcement efforts of the EEOC. Then, I read this story from Ramsey Cox at TheHill.com. It seems some Senate Republicans are taking aim at the National Labor Relations Board.
More after the jump…
It’s easier than you think. Indeed, a recent decision from the National Labor Relations Board bears this out.
Details after the jump…
Last week, the National Labor Relations Board issued this memorandum in which it has instructed regional offices to encourage employees to file complaints with the United States Department of Labor if the the regional NLRB office “believes that an employer may have violated a substantive or anti-retaliation provision of [OSHA] or the FLSA.”
Remember that the National Labor Relations Act covers more than just unionized employers and workplace. For example, many of the social media cases involving the NLRB that you may have read about actually involve non-union workplaces. So, if you haven’t gotten the message already, this NLRB initiative is another wake-up call to get your house in order.
Otherwise, you may have multiple federal agencies up in your business.
In a unanimous opinion delivered yesterday (here) in NLRB v. Noel Canning, the Supreme Court concluded that President Obama’s so-called “recess appointments” of three of the five members of the National Labor Relations Board between the Senate’s January 3 and January 6 pro forma sessions were unconstitutional.
Amy Howe from SCOTUSblog.com summarized the decision “in plain english”:
“[A]ny recess that is shorter than three days is not long enough to make a recess appointment necessary. And a recess that is longer than three days but shorter than ten days will, in the normal case, also be too short to necessitate a recess appointment.”
What with me gabbing on about firefighters afraid of fighting fires, butt grabs, and some Delaware lawyer starving himself over social media, I missed this National Labor Relations Board decision, in which the Board basically held that, as long as you don’t go too far and pull a Latrell Sprewell, you can curse out your boss with impunity.
Literally, you can call your boss a “f*%king crook,” an “a$$hole,” and “stupid” on a Friday, and still have a job to come back to on Monday.
God bless America.
How many of you have social media policies, which contain a provision that reads something like this…
“If you identify yourself as an associate of the Company and publish any work-related information online, you must use this disclaimer: ‘The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of the Company.'”
Yeah, I write these disclaimers all the time for clients. Apparently, they’re unlawful.
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