Copyright

(c) 2010-2024 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.
Showing posts with label NLRB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NLRB. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

NJ Labor Department, USDOL Ink Agreement to Work Together to Protect Businesses and End Exploitation of Workers through Misclassification

The New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development and the U.S Department of Labor pledged a historic new level of cooperation to protect New Jersey’s economy by signing an agreement on August 10, 2018 to work together to end illegal employee misclassification.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Graduate Students Held to be Employees - NLRB Rules Bargaining Group


Todays' post is shared from the NYTimes.com

Punctuating a string of Obama-era moves to shore up labor rights and expand protections for workers, the National Labor Relations Board ruled Tuesday that students who work as teaching and research assistants at private universities have a federally backed right to unionize.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Joint Employment: Workers' Compensation's New Frontier In The New Shared Economy

Last week the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a decision that may have far reaching impact on how "joint employment" is interpreted in workers' compensation cases. Under the doctrine of "joint employment" an employee may be considered an employee of two employers and the ultimate responsibility maybe passed to franchisor under both, The Right to Control or The Nature of the Work, tests.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

NLRB Rejects Northwestern University Football Payers' Bid to Unionize

Ryan Field, Northwestern's 49,000 seat footbal...
Ryan Field, Northwestern's 49,000 seat football stadium. ‪
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The NLRB has rejected a bid by the football players at Northwestern University to unionize. The decision, ironically, did not decide whether or not the football scholarship players were employees.

Monday, July 21, 2014

Justices Find NLRB Recess Appointments Invalid

Today's post was shared by WSJ Law Blog and comes from blogs.wsj.com



President Barack Obama exceeded his authority in appointing three National Labor Relations Board members during a brief Senate break in 2012, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, holding that presidents may only exercise their appointment powers during recesses of 10 or more days.
WSJ’s Jess Bravin and Melanie Trottman have a break down of the decision:
The decision provides a narrow win for employers who contested the validity of labor board rulings made by the recess appointees. But by a 5-4 vote, the court refused to virtually eliminate the president’s power to fill vacancies when the Senate wasn’t transacting business, as a lower court had done.
The majority opinion, by Justice Stephen Breyer, cited more than a century of historical practice that has treated the recess power more broadly, saying that was entitled to judicial respect. Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined him.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in a separate opinion, said the majority gave too broad an interpretation of the president’s power to fill positions without the Senate’s consent. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined him.
The case came from a labor dispute involving a Pepsi bottler in Washington State, the Noel Canning unit of Noel Corp., which contested a National Labor Relations Board ruling that it had unlawfully refused execute a collective­ bargaining agreement with a labor...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Employment Status An Issue: Who's their real boss

Today's post is shared from http://www.mercurynews.com
Who's your boss?
For an increasing number of American workers, it's a hard question to answer. To cut costs and avoid liability, more companies are hiring workers on a temporary or contract basis. More than 17 million people, 12 percent of the U.S. workforce, are now employed as temps, contract or freelance workers.
If you're a temp, which company is responsible for your pay, your schedule — and your right to a safe workplace? The agency that hired you, or the company that hired the agency?
The right answer, according to a group of temporary workers at a recycling plant in Milpitas, is both. They get paid by one company — Leadpoint Business Services — but work under the direction of a different one — Browning Ferris Industries (BFI), which operates the facility.
When temps at Milpitas filed a union organizing petition last year, they asked the National Labor Relations Board to recognize both Leadpoint and BFI as joint employers. Seeking representation by the Teamsters, the workers argued that since two companies share control over the work environment, both should come to the bargaining table.
The regional office of the NLRB disagreed, finding Leadpoint alone was the employer. The temporary workers have appealed. My organization — the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health — recently joined an amicus brief in support of their claim that both companies are joint...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Friday, July 4, 2014

NLRB gets an earful on its “joint employer” definition

English: Color logo of the National Labor Rela...
English: Color logo of the National Labor Relations Board, an independent agency of the United States federal government. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A coalition of occupational health and safety experts submitted an amicus brief to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) last Thursday, urging the Board to reconsider its restrictive definition of “joint employer” for purposes of collective bargaining.  It’s a critical issue for workers as more and more are getting jobs through temp firms, staffing agencies, and other complex employment relationships.  The workers who got your last-minute Father’s Day gift from the Amazon warehouse to your front door, for instance, don’t all get paychecks from Amazon, but they all operate at “Prime” speed because Amazon demands it.

From a health and safety perspective, it’s important that laws like the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) are interpreted broadly because the remedial purposes of those statutes – to ensure all workers can collectively bargain for better working conditions and to ensure that all workers are provided safe jobs – are best achieved when all of the employers with a connection to the job are at the table.

As the amici describe very well, the labor market is evolving to exploit loopholes in the laws that were meant to keep workers safe on the job.  In industries like waste management,
manufacturing, and food production, companies are contracting out some of the most dangerous jobs.  Through those contracts, the host employers seek to...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Sunday, September 1, 2013

National Labor Relations Board Launches Mobile App

As Labor Day 2013 approaches, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)  announced the launch of a new mobile app, available free of charge for iPhone and Android users. The app provides employers, employees and unions with information regarding their rights and obligations under the National Labor Relations Act.

“The National Labor Relations Act guarantees the right of workers to join together, with or without a union, to improve their working lives,” notes NLRB Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce. “The promise of the law can only be fulfilled when employers and employees understand their rights and obligations. With this app, we are using 21st Century technology to inform and educate the public about the law and their rights.”

Last year, the NLRB received more than 82,000 public inquiries regarding workplace issues. “It is clear that the American people have questions about the law,” Pearce said. “This app can help provide the answers.”

The app provides information for employers, employees and unions, with sections describing the rights enforced by the National Labor Relations Board, along with contact information for NLRB regional offices across the country. The app also details the process the NLRB uses in elections held to determine whether employees wish to be collectively represented.

Each month, an average of 2,000 unfair labor practice charges and 200 representation petitions are filed with the NLRB. In 2012, the NLRB collected more than $44 million in backpay or the reimbursement of fees, dues and fines. More than 1,200 employees were offered reinstatement as a result of NLRB enforcement efforts.

The app is currently available for iPhone users on the Apple App Store and for Android users on Google Play.