The Employment Brief

Last Friday, a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge found that the grocery chain Kroger  unlawfully banned non-employee union representatives from distributing petitions in a store parking lot.  Kroger Mid-Atlantic LP, N.L.R.B. A.L.J., No. 5-CA-155160 (Sept. 9, 2016). The issue arose after Kroger announced it was closing a location, but its workers were not offered transfers to new, non-unionized stores.  The workers were only...

Twenty-nine years ago this week, on September 8, 1987, I began my legal career at the law firm then known as Venable, Baetjer & Howard. The late Sam Cook,  Chairman of the firm's Labor & Employment Department asked me if I had enjoyed my "Management Day" holiday the preceding day. Even since, I've had a special affinity for the first Monday in September, and today I offer some thoughts on a couple of trending topics in the world of labor...

Less than a week after the National Labor Relations Board ruled that teaching assistants at private universities are employees under the National Labor Relations Act,  graduate assistants  in 10 Yale academic departments filed separate petitions for union elections with the Board.  The union seeking to represent the graduate assistants, UNITE HERE Local 33, is asking for separate elections under the NLRB's 2011 Specialty Healthcare decision, which...

School is nearly back in session. But rather than be satisfied with some new pens and notebooks, the NLRB’s “back to school list” is huge.  First, there was announcement of the Board’s decision in Columbia University, 364 NLRB No. 90 (Aug. 23, 2016) that graduate students are employees and can form unions.    The Board’s 3-1 decision reversed a 2004 decision that held just the opposite. Second, the Board released decisions in Seattle...