Over the last several months, we have covered judicial developments relating to the NLRB’s D.R. Horton doctrine.  As a reminder, since its D.R. Horton decision, the Board has taken the position that class-waiver provisions in arbitration agreements infringe on the rights of employees to engage in concerted activities and, therefore, violate the National Labor Relations…

Sometimes common sense is not so common. By a Memorandum dated January 31, 2017, the General Counsel of the NLRB has taken the position that student athletes at private colleges and universities are employees within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act, notwithstanding the Board’s issuance of its decision of Northwestern University in 2015…

Earlier this month the United States Supreme Court decided to hear three cases which will resolve the split between various Courts of Appeals (discussed in our prior post here) as to whether individual arbitration agreements barring class arbitration actions in employment-related matters are enforceable. While the Court held in 2011 that the Federal Arbitration Act would allow companies to avoid consumer class actions by insisting upon individual arbitrations in their contracts, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, workers have contended that employment contracts are different. They have successfully argued that the National Labor Relations Act prohibits class waivers since it would impinge upon worker’s rights to engage in “concerted activities”. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals accepted such an argument in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis (discussed in our prior post here), and the Ninth Circuit accepted such an argument in Ernst and Young v. Morris. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the same argument in National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil U.S.A.

Missouri’s new Republican governor has indicated that he fully supports right-to-work legislation, which failed to get past previous governor Jay Nixon in its last go-round. With that being the case, what would a right-to-work law mean for the employers in the state who have collective bargaining agreements with labor organizations?

First, right-to-work legislation does not…

In a prior post, we discussed the Department of Labor’s issuance of a new final rule that expanded disclosure requirements for companies that hire union avoidance consultants.  The Department’s new “persuader” rule required employers to report the hiring of such consultants whenever these third parties engaged in indirect persuader activities (e.g., planning employee meetings,…

On October 3, the National Labor and Relations Board (NRLB) Office of the General Counsel (OGC) issued a Memorandum from the Division of Operations-Management to all Regional Directors, Officers-In-Charge, and Resident Officers.  This Memo (Memorandum OM 17-02) reveals an aggressive new position from the OGC, one which attempts to overturn decades of Board precedent.

For…

In most situations the NLRB’s long established Weingarten doctrine can be applied in a fairly straight-forward fashion.  But I still get questions regarding the interplay of drug and alcohol testing when it comes to Weingarten.  This is probably due to the fact that the Ralphs Grocery Company decision, which issued in 2014, is a…

On Tuesday, October 18, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced that it will once again postpone the enforcement date of the “employee involvement” provisions of its new rule on drug-testing, retaliation claims, and accident reporting, entitled “Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses,” 81 Fed. Reg. 29624 (May 12, 2016).  This is the second…