Bryan M. O'Keefe

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Editors Note: This is the latest installment in the Labor & Employment Report’s regular feature “Specialty Healthcare Watch.”   In Speciality Healthcare, the NLRB redefined the test for what constitutes an appropriate bargaining unit.   The Labor & Employment Report is analyzing post-Speciality Healthcare cases to give employers insights on how to apply that holding.   For more…

Editors Note: This is the latest installment in the Labor & Employment Report’s regular feature “Specialty Healthcare Watch.”   In Speciality Healthcare, the NLRB redefined the test for what constitutes an appropriate bargaining unit.   The Labor & Employment Report is analyzing post-Speciality Healthcare cases to give employers insights on how to apply that holding.   For more…

The NLRB’s General Counsel’s office has aggressively taken on arbitration in the past year.   But, in a little-noticed case, the full Board had the opportunity to adopt the GC’s position on post-arbitration deferral and declined to do so.

Some background — about a year ago, the GC’s office announced a change in how it viewed…

A few weeks ago, I posted about a New York Times op-ed arguing that the “right to join a labor union” should be a protected classification under Title VII.

The issue is starting to pick up steam in the union-friendly blogosphere.  For instance, yesterday over at the Huffington Post, Dean Baker, a well-respected think tank…

So write our friends over at the Boston Herald.   Major labor union leaders are meeting tomorrow in sunny Florida to review the state of labor and it appears that the Democratic Party might be left back in the chilly North.   For sure, organized labor is poised to endorse President Obama again.  But it looks…

The New York Times runs a very….peculiar op-ed today that actually marries labor and employment law.   The authors of the piece argue that the “right to organize” a labor union should become a “protected class” under Title VII.  Here is the crux of their argument: 

Our proposal would make disciplining or firing an employee “on

…

As we previously noted, the constitutionality of the NLRB is an open question these days.  A few weeks ago, House Republicans jumped into the fray and convened a full-fledged hearing on the matter.   That might have been interesting theatre, but, ultimately it did not mean much as far as figuring out if the current Board…

In what appears to be a strange marriage, the IAM and the NUHW have ” signed a letter of intent concerning a potential affiliation” according to a press release Tuesday.  The press release goes on to say that both sides still need to iron out the details, but one can presume that if they are…

Many labor unions by-pass the traditional NLRB election process in organizing.  Instead, unions will approach an employer and ask if the employer will agree to recognize the union if the union obtains a majority of signed union authorization cards — i.e. “card check.”   The union will also ask that the employer sign a “neutrality agreement”…

In this first edition of Specialty Healthcare Watch, I will examine the first case that applied Specality Healthcare, Odwalla Inc., 357 NLRB No. 132 (2011).

This case starts off by answering an important question that management had following Specialty Healthcare — that is, does Specialty Healthcare apply outside the non-acute healthcare setting?  Remember,…