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The Employer Handbook Blog
Articles Posted in Unions (labor relations)
Court to Labor Board: Your “misguided attempt to find a labor-law violation” is “nonsense”
Like The Rock laying the smack(eth) down on Cody Rhodes in a Chicago parking lot, a federal appellate court recently pummelled the National Labor Relations Board. Although to be clear, no one was harmed as part of the DC Court of Appeals’ recent ruling about the contours of employee surveillance.
I’ll tell you what happened.
A federal judge has nixed the NLRB’s proposed new joint-employer rule
On Friday evening, a Texas federal judge blocked a proposed National Labor Relations Board rule that would have made it much easier for employees to unionize when he determined that enforcing the Board’s proposed joint employer rule “would be contrary to the law” and “arbitrary and capricious.”
I’ll give you a little refresher on the Board’s proposal. Then, we’ll examine where it fell apart. Continue reading
Can employers ban workers from wearing Black Lives Matter insignia to protest discrimination at work?
Photo by Brett Sayles: https://www.pexels.com/photo/slogan-black-lives-matter-on-black-board-4665903/
Last week, the National Labor Relations Board decided that a NON-union employer cannot require employees to remove “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) insignia from their work uniform when the BLM marking is a “logical outgrowth” of earlier group protests about racial discrimination in their workplace.
A company must rehire a moonlighting comic it fired for his ‘inflammatory’ standup routine.
About a year ago, a media organization fired one of its reporters after it found his ‘inflammatory’ Instagram posts (NSFW) showing clips of his off-the-clock standup comedy routines.
Last week, an arbitrator, who found some of the reporter’s jokes ‘funny,’ ordered the company to rehire him. Continue reading
There’s a new joint-employer rule. Wait, another one?!? Yes, this one involves employers and labor unions.
Yesterday, the National Labor Relations Board swung the pendulum even further in favor of unions when it issued its Final Rule on joint employment. Continue reading
The feds are trying to make unionizing your workplace easier than draining a two-foot putt.
On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC that it claims in this press release will “effectuate employees’ right to bargain through representatives of their choosing and improve the fairness and integrity of Board-conducted elections.”
That’s one way of putting it. Continue reading
The Labor Board’s top attorney wants to void non-competes that violate labor law. Hot take: meh.
Yesterday, National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memo claiming that the “proffer, maintenance, and enforcement non-compete provisions in employment contracts and severance agreements violate the National Labor Relations Act except in limited circumstances.”
Other labor and employment lawyers may forebode the end for most non-competes.
Me? I ain’t scared. Continue reading
It’s WORSE than we thought. Most of your severance agreements may be ENTIRELY WORTHLESS!
Last month, I told about a National Labor Relations Board decision to ban certain nondisparagement and confidentiality provisions in a severance agreement that businesses give to rank-and-file employees (i.e., non-supervisors) in both union and non-union workplaces.
But there remained some open questions. For example, does the decision apply retroactively to old agreements? What if the employee requests mutual confidentiality language or nondisparagement provisions? What other typical severance agreement provisions are at risk?
Yesterday, we got answers from the Board’s top lawyer. (You may want to sit down and grab a whiskey bottle stress ball.) Continue reading