On July 21, 2020, the NLRB released the decision General Motors LLC and Charles Robinson (GM) which is significant not only for its substance but for its timing. The GM decision held that abusive conduct and speech is not protected §7 activity and applied the burden-shifting rule under the Wright Line standard to evaluate challenged disciplinary actions connected with §7 activity. In a time of social tension amid protests against racism and sexism, the decision permits employers to require civility and peace in the workplace while it simultaneously protects employees’ civil and labor rights.
Employers Not Obligated to Bargain with Union over Discipline While Negotiating a First Contract
When a workforce organizes a union and a labor contract is still months away, human resource issues continue to arise. Often the issue turns on whether the employer has an obligation to bargain with the new union prior to the imposition of workplace discipline. Prior to 2016, under long-settled case law, employers had no statutory
NLRB Decisions Restore Employers’ Right to Use Work Rules to Control Workplace
During the last half of May 2020, the National Labor Relations Board (Board) issued four decisions upholding the legality of employer facially neutral work rules. Two of the decisions applied the Boeing standard to assess the legality of work rules or policies while the other two decisions restored past precedent to find that an employers’ property rights outweighed employees’ right to engage in protected activities under §7 of the National Labor Relations Act (Act). The key highlights of those decisions, including guidance on drafting work rules and policies that are lawful under the Boeing standard, are summarized below.
Protecting Concerted Activity during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Key Points
- Media policies which prohibit employees from communicating with the media must be narrowly tailored to protect legitimate business interests such as protecting confidential information and controlling statements made on behalf of the employer; and
- Media policies that specifically exclude communications by employees that are not made on behalf of the employer and that
Confidentiality and No-Participation Provisions in Voluntary Severance Agreements Lawful
On March 16, 2020, the Board issued its decision in Baylor University Medical Center and Dora S. Camacho reversing the 2018 ALJ decision and holding that Confidentiality and No Participation in Third-Party Claim provisions in a voluntary severance agreement are lawful. The decision overrules Clark Distribution System, Shamrock Foods Co., and Metro Networks to the extent the holdings extend beyond their fact patterns involving employees who were unlawfully dismissed for exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act (Act).
NLRB Denies Collective Bargaining Rights to Adjunct Faculty at Religious University
Husch Blackwell issued a client legal alert regarding the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit v. NLRB, which resulted in the denial of collective bargaining rights to adjunct faculty members employed by Duquesne University, a religious university. In summary, the court held that the
NLRB Overrules Precedent and Limits Use of Perfectly Clear Exception in Successorship Law
On April 2, 2019, in a 3-1 decision split along party lines, the Trump administration’s National Labor Relations Board (Board) appointees significantly narrowed the circumstances under which a successor employer will be construed as a perfectly clear successor and forced to forfeit its right to set initial employment terms. The decision, Ridgewood Health Care Center Inc., and Ridgewood Health Services, Inc., overrules precedent which had established that a successor employer which uses discriminatory hiring practices to target less than all of the bargaining unit’s employees and deprives the union of majority status is a perfectly clear employer. The decision allows a successor employer to retain its right to unilaterally set the initial terms of employment despite its discriminatory actions that directly affect less than all of the predecessor employees.
A Mixed Bag: The NLRB Simultaneously Increases and Limits Employee Rights in Investigatory Meetings
The National Labor Relations Board has long recognized Weingarten rights—the rights to request assistance from union representatives during investigatory interviews by employers. Historically, the Board has limited the types of individuals that can serve in this union representative’s role to union officers that are not legal professionals. However, in the Board’s recent decision in Pacific
The NLRB Pumps the Brakes on Union’s Accretion Efforts
Unions commonly utilize clarification petitions to invoke accretion principles and try to bypass election procedures. However, the National Labor Relations Board’s recent decision in Recology Hay Road and Teamsters Local 315 illustrates how employers can avoid employee accretion into existing bargaining units by emphasizing the lack of interchange between bargaining unit employees and the non-bargaining unit employees at issue. Interchange occurs when employees alternate or transfer between positions.
Micro-Units Going, Going…Gone?
With the new make-up of the NLRB resulting in three Republicans sitting on the Board there is no doubt in my mind that the Specialty Healthcare standard in determining appropriate bargaining units will be one of the first of the “new standards” to disappear.