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.

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…

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.

Although the National Labor Relations Act was initially established to assist unions in organizing employees, its scope is much broader as it also protects employees’ rights to engage in “protected concerted activity.” The NLRB’s interpretation of what constitutes protected concerted activity has fluctuated over the years and, in particular, under the Obama administration it expanded…

Those involved in the world of healthcare cannot escape the ongoing debate regarding staffing levels at healthcare facilities. Main Coast Memorial Hospital recently became an unwitting focal point for this discussion.  A number of internal communications between the nurses’ union and the Hospital over staffing resulted in a series of editorials in the local newspaper. …

After years of stringent oversight, the National labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) is now loosening the reigns over workplace rules.

The Office of the General Counsel of the NLRB recently issued an advice memo analyzing the social media policy of Kumho Tires, a Georgia-based tire manufacturer.  The General Counsel found the employer’s policy was facially lawful…

An analysis of the NLRB General Counsel’s Memorandum

Introduction

On June 6, 2018, the National Labor Relations Board’s (“NLRB”) General Counsel (“GC”) released a memorandum providing guidance on the NLRB’s recent decision in The Boeing Company, 365 NLRB No. 154. When responding to unfair practice charges involving employer handbook rules, the memo provides employers with an easy to follow roadmap to evaluate the legality of employer handbook language and rules.

For a number of years now, since the Missouri’s Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Independence NEA v. Independence School District, there has been a great deal of confusion regarding the collective bargaining process in the State of Missouri for public employees.  All processes for those employees that were specifically excluded from the statutory…

The United States Supreme Court settled a controversy that had been brewing for half a decade as to whether the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) made enforceable individual agreements to arbitrate employment-related claims in the face of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) which is seen to protect individuals’ rights to join together and participate in protected “concerted activity” under Section 7 of the NLRA. In a 5-4 decision, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Court found such class or collective action waivers in arbitration agreements to be enforceable and overturned the decision of the Seventh Circuit in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, (7th Cir. 2016), while resolving a split in the Circuits on this issue. With the resolution of this uncertainty, many other employers may consider individual arbitration agreements, waiving class or collective action, for their employees.