Category: Labor Law

When a company purchases another company that has a unionized workforce, there are various rules developed by the National Labor Relations Board to decide the status of the union following the purchase.  Generally, the purchaser is not obligated to adopt the Union contract, and it can set whatever rates and benefits it wants for any employees it hires. The purchaser, however, may be obligated to recognize and bargain for a new contract with the...

As you may recall, under President Obama's National Labor Relations Board, seemingly  innocuous work rules set forth in employee handbooks were routinely struck down as violating Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.  The pendulum has swung the other  way under President Trump's NLRB, as is shown by the Board's recent decision in LA Specialty Produce Company, No. 32-CA-207919 (10/10/19). The case concerned two rules that...

News reports on virtually everything over the past week (ok, more like nearly two years) has me shaking my head at the “crazy town” world we find ourselves living in.  I have restrained myself from writing blogs about the various things I regularly find absurd, largely because it would consume more time than I have.  But reports coming out over the past few days about the strike vote taken by UNITE HERE housekeeping employees at Marriott put me...

Today, the National Labor Relations Board (Board) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) to establish the standard for finding that one entity is a joint employer with another entity.  Under the proposed rule, an employer may be a joint-employer of another employer’s employees “only if [1] it possesses and exercises direct and immediate control over the essential terms and conditions of employment and [2] has done so in a manner...