- Just another day on the one-way-attorney’s-fee beat: after $87K cop-discrimination verdict, lawyer wants $2.2M award [NJ.com]
- U.S. Chamber white paper on needed fixes in labor law [Jon Hyman and report, “Restoring Common Sense to Labor Law: 10 Policies to Fix at the National Labor Relations Board”]
- California employee-seating class actions begin paying off, $700,000 against Abercrombie & Fitch [Ford Harrison, earlier]
- And good riddance: Trump signs CRA bill repealing labor blacklisting rule for federal contractors [Kathy Hoekstra/Watchdog, Trey Kovacs/CEI, Ford Harrison, earlier, background via PLF]
- Trend worth resisting, if true: transnational norms emanating from International Labour Organization etc. said to be increasingly shaping U.S. labor law [James Brudney via Employment Law Prof]
- To protect free speech and jobs, cut the EEOC’s budget [Hans Bader]
Posts Tagged ‘labor unions’
Judge puts hold on Seattle’s we-unionize-you law
A judge has enjoined, for now, Seattle’s we’ll-pick-a-union-for-Uber-drivers ordinance [Jon Weinberg/On Labor, earlier]
Seattle: we’ll pick a union for Uber drivers
In 2015 the city of Seattle passed a unique law imposing a collective bargaining law on Uber drivers and giving the city itself the power to select a union to represent the drivers. It chose the Teamsters Union, which already represented (competing) taxi drivers. Like the federal law of collective bargaining agreements, the city law purports to take away individual drivers’ rights to reach other deals, whether or not they voted for the union. “The Teamsters are allied with Yellow Cab and pushed for the 2015 ordinance requiring union negotiations.” Litigation in both state and federal court seeks to set aside the law on multiple grounds including pre-emption, antitrust, and privacy violation. [Daniel Fisher] More: WSJ editorial today.
Workplace roundup
- Bad idea keeps spreading: “Philadelphia to Prohibit Asking Job Applicants About Their Prior Wage History” [Ford Harrison] Bill introduced in Maryland legislature [Danielle Gaines, Frederick News-Post on HB 398]
- “New York (State and City) Imposes New Rules for Freelancers, State Contracts” [Daniel Schwartz]
- On the minimum wage, lame reporting and motivated reasoning make war on Econ 101 [David Boaz and Ryan Bourne, Cato]
- In final Obama days, EEOC finalizes rules toughening affirmative action requirements for federal agency employers regarding workers with disabilities [Joe Seiner, Workplace Prof]
- Study: Indictments of union officials correlate with close election outcomes [Mitch Downey via Tyler Cowen]
- “Ohio again tries to restore sanity to its bonkers employment discrimination law” [Jon Hyman]
Labor and the federal courts roundup
- “Labor law in America has reached the absurd point where the NLRB is taking the position that a company can’t tell its employees to have a positive attitude” [Ira Stoll on Trader Joe’s controversy, following on T-Mobile case last April, earlier on predecessor 2014 decision in Hills and Dales General Hospital]
- Judge Janice Rogers Brown, writing for D.C. Circuit, rips NLRB for “abusive tactics and extremism.” orders it to pay employer’s attorney fees [Jon Hyman, David Leishman and Seth Borden, McGuire Woods Labor Relations Today (citing Board’s “nonacquiescence” policy), opinion in Heartland Plymouth Court MI, LLC v. NLRB]
- Quoting John Ross’s Short Circuit: Illinois telephone company “may not have violated the rights of striking worker (who allegedly followed a non-striker onto the highway, cut him off, slowed down, and did not allow him to pass) by firing her, says the D.C. Circuit. Concurring in her own opinion, Judge Millett reprimands the NLRB for long countenancing strikers’ sexually and racially demeaning behavior.” More on Millett’s concurrence in Consolidated Communications v. NLRB: Jon Hyman, and more on the case itself from the U.S. Chamber;
- Also quoting Short Circuit: “After discussions with NLRB, Norwood, Mass. car dealership revises employee handbook. NLRB: The new dress code, which prohibits some employees from wearing ‘pins, insignias, or other message clothing,’ still restricts labor rights. First Circuit: Just so. Dissent: Pity employers who want their employees to look nice. “[T]he Board and the courts have lured businesses into a legal bog.'”
- Congress hasn’t passed ENDA. Will courts approve EEOC’s scheme of cobbling it together virtually from other legal materials? [ABA Journal, Will Baude and more, Eugene Volokh on Seventh Circuit argument]
- California agricultural-labor law creates a right to trespass for union organizers. Help, Ninth Circuit! [Ilya Shapiro and Frank Garrison]
At National Interest: I assess Obama’s farewell speech
Labor roundup
- Want or need to contract out of the rules set by Seattle’s new worker-scheduling ordinance? You’ll have to unionize. Cute, no? [Bruce M. Cross et al., Perkins Coie] Also in Seattle: ostensible safety initiative aims to force hotels to unionize, would require blacklisting of guests even absent legal complaint [Carla Murray, CrossCut]
- “NLRB GC now wants to legalize intermittent and partial strikes” [Michael VanDervort]
- Boston city hall to private firms: nice little outfit you got there, shame if it didn’t unionize [Steve Malanga, earlier here, here on alleged extortion scheme]
- Less a university and more a shop floor: NLRB ruling on teaching/research assistants did more harm than good [Jon Hyman, earlier here, here]
- NLRB makes it as quick and easy as it can for workers to join a union. But should they wish instead to leave… [Diana Furchtgott-Roth]
- “Will NLRB’s New ‘Joint Employer’ Standard Discourage Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives?” [Seth Borden]
Labor and employment roundup
- “This One Simple Trick — Used by Colin Kaepernick — Will Make It Harder To Fire You” [Coyote] And on the topic of retaliation, Obama administration appointeees have been revising doctrine in a direction sharply unfavorable to employers both at the EEOC and at OSHA, the latter of which has legal authority to enforce the retaliation provisions of many laws like Dodd-Frank unrelated to conventional occupational hazard [Jon Hyman on EEOC and OSHA]
- In $5 million award, Texas jury finds SEIU playbook on janitors’ campaign encouraged lawbreaking disruption of target business and its clients [Jon Cassidy and Charles Blain, WSJ]
- Obama administration’s new blacklisting rule on labor violations gives unions a whip hand in negotiations with federal contractors, as if by design [Marc Freedman, U.S. Chamber]
- Finally, a state appellate court pokes a hole in the bizarre California Rule under which public employers may not reduce future pension benefits even when based on work not yet performed [Dan Walters/Sacramento Bee, Scott Shackford, Reason]
- Hearing over expanding employment-law damages in Colorado highlights shift in EEO law toward goal of money extraction [Merrily Archer]
- Post-Friedrichs, the future of mandatory union dues in public employment [Federalist Society podcast with Scott Kronland and William Messenger] “Big Labor Tries To Eliminate Right-To-Work By Lawsuit” [George Leef]
September 14 roundup
- “Conviction Overturned In Case Of Rutgers Student Whose Roommate Committed Suicide After Being Secretly Filmed” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt; earlier on Dharun Ravi and the Tyler Clementi case generally]
- Report from Denver: “Threat of Lawsuits Crimps Condo Developments” [Chris Kirkham, WSJ]
- “California bans Civil War painting from county fair because it shows Confederate flag. Artist now suing the state.” [Jacob Gershman, WSJ Law Blog; Ken White, Popehat]
- Don’t make housing discrimination law a money tree for municipal government plaintiffs [Thaya Brook Knight and Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus brief in Supreme Court case of Bank of America v. City of Miami; earlier on municipal suits against banks here, here, here, etc.]
- Federal court: bus company not responsible for what happened to its passenger after she alit in D.C.’s Union Station [Reyen v. Jones Lang Lasalle and Megabus]
- Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and eight GOP colleagues co-sponsor bill to transfer $490 million to United Mine Workers pension fund [Diana Furchtgott-Roth, WSJ]
Great moments in public employee unionism, cont’d
“Metro is fighting its largest union, which has sued to reinstate a tunnel fan inspector who was fired after last year’s L’Enfant Plaza smoke disaster for allegedly falsifying an inspection report and later lying about his actions.” The lethal smoke incident killed one rider “and injured dozens more.” [Martine Powers, Washington Post, earlier]