Management Memo

Today, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a nationwide preliminary injunction halting the Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) controversial new Persuader Rule and its new Advice Exemption Interpretation, previously discussed here and here.  The Rule and Interpretation marked a dramatic change by requiring public financial disclosure reports concerning payments that employers make in connection with “indirect persuader activities” that were not reportable under the long standing rules, but that would, if the new rule were to take ...

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U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Schiltz “has found that aspects” of the Department of Labor’s Amended Persuader Rule “are likely invalid because they require reporting of advice that is exempt from disclosure under Section 203(c)” of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA).

The Amended Persuader Rule Makes Distinctions Between Materially Indistinguishable Activities

In his 34 page opinion denying the plaintiffs’ application for a temporary restraining order ...

Featured on Employment Law This Week: The NLRB reverses its mixed-guard unit recognition rule. If a union represents both security guards and other employee groups, then an employer’s decision to recognize the union is voluntary. Before this decision, employers could also withdraw their recognition if no collective bargaining agreement was reached.  Now, employers must continue to recognize the union unless and until the employees vote to decertify it in an NLRB election.

View the episode below or read more about this story in a previous blog post, written by Steven M ...

Featured on Employment Law This Week: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finds the hiring of permanent replacements for strikers to be an unfair labor practice.

In a 2-1 decision that could benefit unions during contract negotiations, the NLRB found that a continuing care facility in California violated federal labor law when it hired permanent replacements after a series of intermittent strikes. While the NLRB and courts have long held that an employer’s motivation for hiring permanent replacements is irrelevant, in this case, the board held that if the hiring is ...

One of the top stories featured on Employment Law This Week: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has joined the National Labor Relations Board in finding that arbitration agreements containing class action waivers violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

At issue is a collective and class action by employees of Epic Systems about overtime pay. The company was seeking to dismiss the case based on a mandatory arbitration agreement that waived an employee’s right to participate in a collective or class action. Unlike the Fifth Circuit, the Seventh Circuit ...

The National Labor Relations Board, in a 2-1 decision by Chairman Mark Pearce and Member Kent Hirozawa, in American Baptist Homes of the West, 364 NLRB No. 13, has adopted a new standard for considering the legality of an employer’s hiring of permanent replacements in response to economic strikes. The decision, in the words of Member Philip Miscimarra’s dissent, is not only a “deformation of Board precedent,” but “a substantial rearrangement of the competing interests balanced by Congress when it chose to protect various economic weapons, including the hiring of ...

[caption id="attachment_1437" align="alignright" width="98"] Steven M. Swirsky[/caption]

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago has now sided with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) in its decision in Lewis v. Epic Systems Corporation, and found that an employer’s arbitration agreement that it required all of its workers to sign, requiring them to bring any wage and hour claims that they have against the company in individual arbitrations “violates the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and is unenforceable under the Federal ...

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National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Richard F. Griffin, Jr., has announced in a newly issued Memorandum Regional Directors in the agency’s offices across the country that he is seeking a change in law that would make it much more difficult for employees who no longer wish to be represented by a union to do so.  Under long standing case law, an employer has had the right to unilaterally withdraw recognition from a union when there is objective evidence that a majority of the ...

Two years ago, as we discussed here and here, in NLRB v. Noel Canning, 134 S. Ct. 2550 (2014), the U.S. Supreme Court held unconstitutional President Obama’s January 2012 recess appointments of Members Block, Flynn and Griffin to the National Labor Relations Board (“Board” or “NLRB”). The decision cast into doubt the validity of hundreds of NLRB orders and official actions.

Recently, in Advanced Disposal Services East Inc. v. NLRB, decided April 21, 2016, the employer, Advanced Disposal Services, unsuccessfully attempted to invalidate actions taken by Regional ...

[caption id="attachment_1437" align="alignright" width="98"] Steven M. Swirsky[/caption]

In a further incursion into the area of the gig and new age economy, the Regional Director for the National Labor Relations Board’s Los Angeles office has issued an unfair labor practice complaint alleging that it is a violation of the National Labor Relations Act (the “Act”) for an employer to misclassify an employee as an independent contractor.

The Complaint, which is based on a charge filed by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, through its’ Justice For Port Truck ...