The NLRB finds that the women’s shoe sales employees at Bergdorf Goodman’s New York Store are not an appropriate unit for bargaining. The Board’s unanimous decision to reverse the Regional Director’s finding that the shoe sales team did constitute an appropriate unit and could have their own vote on union representation comes one week after its decision finding that a unit limited to the cosmetics and fragrance sales employees at a Macy’s in Saugus were an appropriate unit for bargaining. The Regional Directors who issued the Decisions and Directions of Election in ...
The New York Times reported today in its business section in article by Steven Greenhouse, who covers labor matters for the paper, about a convention taking place in Addison. The convention is underwritten by the Service Employees International Union or SEIU, which has been not very quietly backing the “Stand for Fifteen,” movement in its quest for wages of $15 per hour in the fast food field. It is probably not a coincidence that Addison is just four miles from McDonald’s headquarters in Oak Brook, Il.
While most of last week’s focus in labor relations law was on the NLRB’s ...
By: Steven M. Swirsky, Adam C. Abrahms, and D. Martin Stanberry
In case you were hoping that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Noel Canning would finally put to bed any questions regarding President Obama’s recess appointments to the NLRB, or that the Fifth Circuit’s rejection of the Board’s decision in D.R. Horton might alter the NLRB’s position on the right of employers to require employees to abide by mandatory arbitration agreements , think again.
In Fuji Food Products a decision issued on July 15, 2014, NLRB Administrative Law Judge Jeffrey D. Wedekind held ...
On Epstein Becker Green’s OSHA Law Update blog, Eric Conn reviews the agreement between the NLRB and OSHA, which allows employees to file out-of-date safety related whistleblower claims to be filed with the NLRB.
Following is an excerpt from the blog post:
On May 21, 2014, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) published a memorandum discussing a new agreement between NLRB and OSHA regarding a backdoor route for employees to file safety related whistleblower claims that are too stale to be filed with OSHA. The NLRB memo directs OSHA representatives to “notify all ...
Our colleague Stuart Gerson of Epstein Becker Green has a new post on the Supreme Court’s recent decisions: “Divided Supreme Court Issues Decisions on Harris and Hobby Lobby.”
Following is an excerpt:
As expected, the last day of the Supreme Court’s term proved to be an incendiary one with the recent spirit of Court unanimity broken by two 5-4 decisions in highly-controversial cases. The media and various interest groups already are reporting the results and, as often is the case in cause-oriented litigation, they are not entirely accurate in their analyses of either ...
By: Adam C. Abrahms, Kara M. Maciel, Steven M. Swirsky, and Mark M. Trapp
The U.S. Supreme Court today held that the US Senate was not in recess on January 4, 2012, when President Obama made three “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board under the Constitution’s Recess Appointment Clause. In simple terms that means that the recess appointments were not proper and s decisions in which the recess appointees participated were not valid.
What this now means is that hundreds of cases decided by the NLRB following the January 4, 2012 recess appointments to the ...
On Epstein Becker Green's OSHA Law Update blog, Eric Conn reviews an article about OSHA's web-based "Worker Safety in Hospitals" guidance. The article is entitled "Hospitals' Heavy Lifting: Understanding OSHA's New Hospital Worker and Patient Safety Guidance" and is co-authored by our colleagues Eric Conn, James Frank, and Serra Schlanger. As Management Memo readers are aware, unions frequently use OSHA complaints as a tactic in corporate campaigns and OSHA has increased its cooperation with the NLRB in their enforcement mandates. OSHA compliance is an important part of any ...
Our colleague Allen B. Roberts recently wrote a client advisory entitled “Unions Swim Against the Tide as Pension Issues Surface for Negotiations and Organizing,” which appears on Epstein Becker Green's website.
Following is an excerpt:
Contributions to multiemployer defined benefit pension plans have been a mainstay, legacy feature of union negotiations in many industries. But the fabric of such staples may be tearing apart as employers contemplate the potential of escalating contributions to amortize unfunded liabilities that increase costs but may have ...
By Steven M. Swirsky and Peter M. Panken
NLRB General Counsel Richard Griffin has declared in an April 30, 2014 General Counsel Memorandum. that his office will continue and expand the increasingly aggressive pursuit of injunctions in Federal Court against employers in connection with union organizing and bargaining for initial collective bargaining agreements.
In GC Memorandum GC 14-30, the Board’s regional offices have been directed that they should aggressively consider requesting authorization from the General Counsel and the Board to pursue Section 10(j) injunctions ...
By Kara M. Maciel and Lindsay A. Smith
On April 30, 2014, the National Labor Relations Board (the “Board”) invited interested parties to submit amicus briefs addressing an employee’s right to use an employer’s electronic communications system for Section 7 activity in the case of Purple Communications Inc. Based on a prior Board decision in Guard Publishing Co. d/b/a Register Guard (2007), employers are not currently required to allow employee use of their e-mail systems for protected, concerted activities because in that case the Board held, “employees have no ...
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Recent Updates
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- Chevron Is Overturned, but Stakeholders Need Not Worry
- Video: SCOTUS Limits Availability of Injunctions in NLRB Unfair Labor Practice Cases - Employment Law This Week
- Supreme Court Rules NLRB 10(j) Injunctions Must Meet Higher Preliminary Injunction Standard in Blow to NLRB
- OSHA’s New Walkaround Rule Potentially Grants Union Representatives Access to Safety Investigations