- Despite misconception that the NLRB goes after employers only over union-related issues, its reach includes “concerted activity” by workers whether unionized or not, and it intends to make that power felt [Jon Hyman]
- EEOC cracks down on Marylou’s, Massachusetts coffee shop chain said to hire “pretty” staff. Tougher scrutiny of “looksism” ahead? [James McDonald/Fisher & Phillips, HR Morning, Boston Herald, related editorial]
- As critics warned at the time, Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblowing provisions make a versatile weapon for employment plaintiffs [Daniel Schwartz]
- “Is Your Job Too Hard? File a Lawsuit!” [Philip Miles]
- Unions go to court seeking to overturn new Indiana right to work law [Asheesh Agerwal, Liberty Law] “Unions: Political By Nature” [Ivan Osorio, CEI “Open Market”] SEIU vigilant against menace of higher employer wage offers [James Sherk, NRO] Metropolitan Opera’s $516,577 electrician outearned Carnegie Hall’s $436,097 stagehand [Ira Stoll]
- Sen. Al Franken [D-Minn.] and Rep. Rosa DeLauro [D-Conn.] introduce bill to overturn SCOTUS’s Wal-Mart v. Dukes [The Hill, Paul Karlsgodt, PoL, Andrew Trask]
- Lefties: you ‘tarians slight the greater freedom of being able to force people to employ you [MR: Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok]
- If you’re caught sleeping on the job, courts may not prove sympathetic to your age bias claim [Eric Meyer, Employer Handbook]
Posts Tagged ‘labor unions’
From the Globe and Mail
The Toronto Globe and Mail prints my letter to the editor correcting some misrepresentations of U.S. labor law by Canadian Auto Workers union economist Jim Stanford. The text of the letter as it ran, slightly abridged, in the paper:
Jim Stanford says that in the 23 states with “right to work” laws, unions are “effectively prohibited; indeed, in right-to-work states, private-sector unionism is virtually non-existent” (Wisconsin’s Disease Crosses The Border – July 3).
This would come as a surprise to millions of employees in those 23 states who join and are represented at their workplace by unions. In Alabama, for example, which has had a right-to-work law since 1953, 183,000 workers (about 11 per cent of the labour force) are represented by unions, including 84,000 workers in the private sector. (source)
Emboldened or otherwise, Republicans in the states have no authority to alter the 1935 Wagner Act or other federal laws. In states like Wisconsin, they have sought to alter laws prevailing in about two-thirds of states that prescribe collective bargaining by public employees; these laws are of much more recent vintage than the New Deal, often dating to the 1960-85 period. Given Franklin Roosevelt’s well-documented skepticism toward collective bargaining by government employees, it is no surprise that he did not see fit to build any such element into his New Deal.
Walter Olson, senior fellow, the Cato Institute, Washington
Knox v. SEIU
My colleague Ilya Shapiro hails as “a major victory for individual liberties” today’s Supreme Court decision in Knox v. SEIU, in which a five-member majority, reversing the Ninth Circuit, upheld the right of union members not to be assessed political contributions without their consent; Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor concurred in the result but not the majority opinion, while Justices Breyer and Kagan dissented. More: Damon Root, Reason; Daniel Fisher, Forbes; Trevor Burrus, Cato (quoting Justice Alito’s majority opinion: “the effect of the SEIU’s procedure was to force many nonmembers to subsidize a political effort designed to restrict their own rights.”).
Labor and employment roundup
- “The extra UAW subsidies cost $26.5 billion… The Detroit auto bailout was, in fact, a UAW bailout.” [James Sherk and Todd Zywicki; Volokh]
- In 5-4 decision [Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham] Supreme Court rejects Department of Labor interpretation of independent contractor status [Trevor Burrus/Cato, SCOTUSBlog, Michael Fox]
- “The next battleground for the NLRB? Acting General Counsel Suggests At-Will Disclaimers May Violate NLRA” [Daniel Schwartz, earlier]
- Thoughts on labor law from David Henderson and from Jacob Levy at Bleeding Heart Libertarians; “Freeing Labor Markets by Reforming Union Laws” [Charles W. Baird, Downsizing The Federal Government]
- Aspiring Gotham cop: “Anti-gay Muslim cries bias” [NY Post]
- New York privacy law conceals misconduct in uniformed services [Tuccille, Reason]
- “The New Front in the Labor Wars Has Officially Opened in Michigan” [Shikha Dalmia]
“Think carefully about ‘friending’ co-workers.”
Jon Hyman finds the National Labor Relations Board’s policy on social media in the workplace a “bungled mess.” More: Reed Smith.
Labor and employment law roundup
- Connecticut: “Medical Marijuana Bill Includes Restrictions For Employers” [Daniel Schwartz, my take earlier]
- More on Montgomery County Maryland police-disability scams [WaPo editorial, earlier] California cop-pension backlash [Greenhut]
- Highest rate of per capita EEOC charges is in Deep South [David Foley, Labor Related]
- Are unpaid internships immoral? Illegal? [David Henderson/Econlog, more]
- NLRB memo launches assault on common language found in personnel manuals [Daniel Schwartz]
- Year’s most embarrassingly awful dispute over whether employee misconduct was within scope of employment [Lowering the Bar, adult content]
- Ominously, Canadian Supreme Court has read labor union rights into the nation’s constitutional Charter, most recently in Fraser case [Workplace Prof on new book; CFLR; Roy Adams/SocialPolicy.org]
NLRB ALJ: restaurant can’t fire workers over false posters claiming its food is unsafe
Following an unsuccessful effort to unionize franchise restaurants of the Jimmy John’s chain around the Minneapolis area, run by a firm named MikLin, the Industrial Workers of the World union (“Wobblies”) began a second campaign, as John Hauge 
explains at Minnesota Employer:
Part of the campaign involved putting up posters that called into question the healthfulness of sandwiches prepared in MikLin’s shops. The posters erroneously stated that employees were not allowed to call in sick, and implied that persons eating the sandwiches risked illness by doing so. Several employees supporting the campaign met with MikLin to demand that it provide sick pay to employees, and threatened to put the posters up all over the Twin Cities. The union also issued a press release entitled “Jimmy John’s Workers Blow the Whistle on Unhealthy Working Conditions.”
In a 1953 case called NLRB v. Electrical Workers Local 1229 (Jefferson Standard), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that although federal labor law in general forbids employers to dismiss workers for union advocacy, it makes an exception for expressions of “disloyalty”, as in the case of “a sharp, public, disparaging attack upon the quality of the company’s product and its business policies, in a manner reasonably calculated to harm the company’s reputation and reduce its income.” In those cases, the Court ruled, an employer was still free to dismiss the disloyal workers, union activists or no.
You might think that would fit the facts of the Jimmy John’s case quite well, especially given the falsity of the assertion that the restaurant workers couldn’t take sick leave. But an administrative law judge at the NLRB has disagreed, ordering back pay and reinstatement for the dismissed union workers and dismissing the falsity as mere “hyperbole.”
Hauge at Minnesota Employer calls the decision “creative” and warns readers that (assuming the decision is not overturned at the board level) the NLRB may be increasingly inclined to extend protection against “retaliation” to a wider swath of “untrue, malicious and/or disparaging” talk during union campaigns. At least when it comes from the pro-union side.
Labor and employment law roundup
- Gov. Walker’s public sector labor reforms popular with Wisconsin voters, and have saved taxpayers a fortune [Morrissey, Fund, Marquette poll (public favors new law by 50-43 margin] What would FDR say? [Dalmia, The Daily]
- “Why you should stop attending diversity training” [Suzanne Lucas, CBS MarketWatch, following up on our earlier post]
- The gang that couldn’t regulate straight: “Court rebuffs Labor Department on sales rep overtime” [Dan Fisher, Forbes] Lack of quorum trips up NLRB on “quickie”/ambush elections scheme [Workplace Prof]
- Not all claimed “gun rights” are authentic, some come at expense of the vital principle of at-will employment [Bainbridge]
- Brace yourself, legal academics at work on a Restatement of Employment Law [Michael Fox]
- “Why Delaware’s Proposed Workplace Privacy Act Is All Wrong” [Molly DiBianca]
- USA Today on lawyers’ role in growth of Social Security disability rolls [Ira Stoll]
Labor and employment roundup
- Failure to accommodate employee’s religious belief forbidding hair-cutting results in $27K payout by Taco Bell operator [EEOC, North Carolina]
- There’s a reason they call it Government Motors: nonunion GM assembly workers get shaft [Fountain]
- Mayor Bloomberg refreshingly sane on “living wage,” though not alas rent control [Heather Mac Donald, Secular Right]
- “The cost of labor isn’t the main problem, it’s the rigidities,” says French CEO [Bloomberg]
- Maryland governor signs bill softening “workplace fraud” law that bedevils firms that use independent contractors [H.B. 1364, earlier]
- Watch out for ghastly, mislabeled “Paycheck Fairness Act,” they’re trying to bring it back [Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Examiner, earlier]
- “The most infuriating part of this is that it takes five years of litigation to fire a badly behaved police officer” [Josh Barro, Masnick/TechDirt, on cop’s harassment of skateboarder; Baltimore Sun (police union calls officer’s firing “outrageous.”)]
Labor and employment law roundup
- Arbitrator: felonious Montgomery County, Maryland cops should keep disability pay [Examiner] “Cop who took naked photos of rape victim can keep pension” [NY Post] Cop who pepper-sprayed UC Davis protesters is still on job, and maybe that’s how they’d have it [Radley Balko]
- “Billions in retroactive liability” in pharma detailer wage/hour action before SCOTUS [Marcia Coyle, NLJ] And USA Today chose a faulty “worker discontent” theme on wage/hour case, since as class actions these suits are lawyer-driven;
- Australia: “Worker injured during sex gets compensation payout” [News.com.au]
- “Courts are finally starting to apply ADAAA—and it ain’t pretty” [Jon Hyman] ADA: “Judge Rules In Favor of Fired Employee With Bipolar Disorder” [ABC]
- NLRB goes after Hyatt on employee handbook language [Gary Shapiro, Examiner] Union claims Indiana right-to-work law violates Thirteenth Amendment ban on slavery [James Sherk, NRO]
- EEOC: sex discrimination law bars bias against transgender employees [AP, Hyman] “EEOC Obtains Substantial Settlement in Obesity Discrimination Suit” [Disabilities Law]
- Law journal prediction: adherents of racism will claim Title VII protection [Lawrence D. Rosenthal, Temple L. Rev. via Workplace Prof]