Labor Law & NLRB

Subscribe to Labor Law & NLRB via RSS

auction-gavel-HpmTks-clipartA federal judge in Texas has issued a preliminary injunction that prevents the Department of Labor’s revised overtime exemption rule from taking effect as scheduled on December 1, 2016.

As discussed in our May 18, 2016 E-lert, in order to be exempt from overtime, a white-collar employee must meet three tests: (1) the salary basis test – the employee must be paid on a salary basis, not subject to reductions for fluctuations in quantity or quality of work; (2) the salary level test – the employee’s salary must currently be at least $455 per week (equaling $23,660 per year); and (3) a duties test – the employee must perform certain duties specific to the executive, administrative or professional exemption in question.  There is also a highly-compensated employee exemption under which an employee must currently make at least $100,000 per year and perform at least one exempt duty.
Continue Reading Overtime Rule Will Not Take Effect On December 1

ml_rm_iliw_tm_4cc_d_eAs I mentioned in a recent post, “SEIU Fights Its Own Unionization,” the Service Employees International Union has been behind the push at the National Labor Relations Board to extend joint employer status to franchisors, like McDonald’s (meaning that McDonald’s would be deemed an employer of its franchisees’ employees). And now, it is further extending this push – to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. On October 5, 2016, (as first reported by The Guardian) Fight for $15 (which is backed and funded by SEIU) announced that it had helped 15 McDonald’s employees (who are also Fight for $15 activists, unsurprisingly) file charges with the EEOC, claiming that they had been sexually harassed by their employers. Apparently only one of the charges was filed against a corporate McDonald’s store – the rest were filed jointly against franchisee stores and McDonald’s Corporation.
Continue Reading SEIU Expands Joint Employment Fight to the EEOC

downloadAs I’ve made clear in past posts, I am increasingly frustrated with the current National Labor Relations Board’s clearly pro-union, anti-employer approach. I find many of their decisions to have little or no relationship to common sense or logic. So I found a concurring opinion by Judge Patricia Millett in the recent case of Consolidated Communications, Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board to be of particular interest, as she expresses her “substantial concern with the too-often cavalier and enabling approach that the Board’s decisions have taken toward the sexually and racially demeaning misconduct of some employees during strikes.” Judge Millet goes on to say, “These decisions have repeatedly given refuge to conduct that is not only intolerable by any standard of decency, but also illegal in every other corner of the workplace.” (!!!!)
Continue Reading Why Does the NLRB Tolerate Racist and Sexist Conduct?

As many of you may have heard and as we discussed in our August E-Update, last week in The Trustemortar-board-2-1551255es of Columbia University in the City of New York, the National Labor Relations Board reversed a twelve-year precedent in holding that student teaching and research assistants at private universities are statutory employees under the National Labor Relations Act and can therefore unionize.

There has been a flurry of employee-friendly decisions issued by the Labor Board in recent weeks to coincide with – not surprisingly – the conclusion of Member Hirozawa’s three-year term on August 27, 2016. This case, however, irks me more than most.  The Majority stated that preventing graduate assistants the right to unionize “deprived an entire category of workers of the protections of the [NLRA] without a convincing jurisdiction” because, according to the Majority, “even when such an economic component may seem comparatively slight, relative to other aspects of the relationship between worker and employer, the payment of compensation, in conjunction with the employer’s control, suffices to establish an employment relationship for purposes of the Act.” And yet, in 2004, the Labor Board reached a contrary conclusion – that graduate assistants are not statutory employees who have the right to unionize, because the Labor Board acknowledged that graduate assistants have a primarily academic, not economic, relationship with their universities.  So what’s changed? That is a rhetorical question.  Obviously, nothing has changed, but the make-up of the Labor Board and its current desire to expand the reach of the Act.
Continue Reading The NLRB Changes Its Mind Again

U-Turn-SignIn another blow to management, on July 11, 2016, a divided National Labor Relations Board issued Miller & Anderson, in which it reversed course after more than a decade to return to the rule established in the 2000 case of M.B. Sturgis, Inc., whereby employees supplied by a staffing agency can be included in a single bargaining unit — and vote in an NLRB representation election — with an employer’s regular employees without the consent of both employers.

In 2004, M.B. Sturgis was itself reversed by Oakwood Care Center, in which the Board held that a union could organize a bargaining unit consisting of an employer’s regular employees and employees supplied by a staffing agency only if both the employer and the staffing agency consented to a combined secret ballot election.Continue Reading NLRB Eases Unionization of Employees Referred by Staffing Agencies

gavel-1238036The U.S. District Court in Minnesota ruled, on June 22, 2016, that the Department of Labor’s new interpretation of the advice exemption from the persuader rule is “untenable” and “flawed.”   The Court did not issue an injunction against the new interpretation, which goes into effect July 1, 2016, but that was based on its finding that the DOL suspended the most objectionable reporting requirement after the lawsuit was filed.  The challenge to the new interpretation was filed by Worklaw Network, a national alliance of labor and employment firms of which we are a member.  Our firm, along with Seaton, Peters & Revnew, P.A. of Minneapolis, represented Worklaw, as we discussed in a prior post, “Shawe Rosenthal and Worklaw Just Sued the DOL.”
Continue Reading Court Finds DOL’s New Persuader Rule “Flawed”

That’s an eye-catcher of a title, isn’t it? As reported by the New York Times, Babeland, an adult toy store, became the first sex shop to become unionized. Workers at three New York City locations voted to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, one of the country’s largest retail unions.vienna-2-1552451

Why did they choose to unionize? There were several typical reasons – wanting more transparency around hiring, promotions and discipline, as well as better ways of addressing workplace disputes and grievances.

But there were some other, less typical reasons. One is the customers. I’m sure you aren’t surprised to hear that Babeland’s customers can be, well, difficult. Some of them seem to believe that it’s ok to sexually harass sex shop workers. The workers want management to provide better training and support in dealing with these folks.
Continue Reading Sex Shop Workers Unionize

In a perplexing – if not shocking – decision, the National Labor Relations Board determined that there is substantial difference between an employee having the opportunity to vote in a mail ballot election, and his or her vote in fact being counted.

In Premier Utility Services, LLC, the employer, a utility company with 101 employees living and working in New York City’s five boroughs, participated in a mail ballot election from October 20 to November 4, 2015 to determine whether Communications Workers of America, Local 1101 would represent the petitioned-for employees.  However, as of November 4, 2015, the NLRB Regional Office had received only four (!) ballots.  As a result, the parties postponed the tally of ballots until November 12, 2015, a somewhat usual departure from the NLRB’s usual election procedures.  By November 12, 2015, the NLRB only received 34 ballots out of the possible 101.  Nevertheless, the Region counted the ballots and the Union received a majority of the votes counted, 20-14.Mail

Following the count, the NLRB Regional office received an additional 55 ballots, including 48 ballots that were postmarked before November 4, the end of the original voting period.  The Regional Director, however, refused to count the 48 ballots that were postmarked before November 4 because they were received after November 12.  As a result, the union was certified as the bargaining representative based on only 34 votes out of 101 eligible voters, even though a large number of additional ballots had been timely mailed!!!Continue Reading NLRB Refuses to Count Timely-Mailed Ballots

The Maryland 2016 legislative session endedshadow-dollar-sign-1239535 on Monday.  A friend of mine mentioned that she heard the General Assembly passed an equal pay law in Maryland. But guess what? There is already an Equal Pay for Equal Work law in Maryland – it’s been in place for almost 25 years!! The current law already prohibits employers from discriminating against employees of one sex who work in the “same establishment” and perform work of comparable character or work in the same operation, in the same business, or of the same type by paying a lesser wage than an employee of another sex.

The equal pay bill mentioned, House Bill 1003, expands the prohibitions on discriminatory pay practices. It also adds an entirely new pay transparency provision. Specifically:
Continue Reading “New” Equal Pay Bill for Maryland

Although the government is often a thorn in the side of many of our clients, it is not every day that we decide to sue the government. Today was a different story.

On March 31, 2016, Shawe Rosenthal, on behalf of the Worklaw®Network, a nationwide association of independent labor and employment law firms of which we are a member, filed suit against the U.S. Department of Labor to block the Department’s new interpretation of the persuader rule. A copy of the complaint can be viewed here.

We discussed the new persuader rule in a previous post. To reiterate briefly, a federal law called the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act requires people who assist employers to fend off union organizing drives to file reports with the Department of Labor. The law contains an “advice exemption” under which employers and their attorneys do not have to report confidential information protected by the attorney-client relationship.  For decades, the Department has correctly held that the “advice exemption” applies to lawyers who advise clients concerning union organizing drives, as long as the lawyers do not communicate directly with employees.  Under the new interpretation, effective July 1, 2016, the Department has substantially narrowed the advice exemption.  (Actually, the Department would say it substantially narrowed the exemption.  I would say the Department completely eliminated it.)
Continue Reading Shawe Rosenthal and Worklaw Just Sued the DOL