Category: Labor Law

Forget March Madness baby.  Here’s where things get interesting. The Chicago Region of the NLRB has announced its decision that Northwestern University football players are “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act, and that they can vote to unionize.   Northwestern University, 13-R-121359 (March 26, 2014).   The University has indicated its intent to appeal the decision to the full NLRB in Washington. By way of background, a...

On October 29th, the Senate confirmed Richard F. Griffin Jr. as the NLRB’s new General Counsel.  He replaces Lafe E. Solomon, who filed the much publicized case against Boeing.  Mr. Griffin, a longtime lawyer for the International Union of Operating Engineers, previously served on the NLRB but was replaced amid controversy and litigation over whether President Obama’s recess appointments (of which he was one) were unconstitutional. Mr....

Two  appellate courts have decided that the recess appointments Obama made of three NLRB members in January 2012 were made without proper legal authority resulting. therefore, with the NLRB acting without a valid quorum. Indeed, the Supreme Court has agreed to review the first such decision, Noel Canning Division of Noel Corp. v. NLRB, 705 F.3d 4901 (D.C. Cir. 2013), which held that the 2012 appointments were unconstitutional. In NLRB v. Enterprise...

Even though we now have the first complete NLRB in over a decade, the fallout from the Obama Administration’s recess appointments at the Board  continue to percolate through the courts.  A recent decision from a federal district court in Washington state has denied the Board’s petition for an injunction against an employer because acting general counsel Lafe Solomon’s appointment was “improper” and he lacked the power to authorize an...