Northwestern athletes’ “college football participation = paid work to be governed by labor laws” argument may boomerang with a whopping tax bill [TaxProf, Bleacher Report on NLRB giving nod to idea]
Posts Tagged ‘National Labor Relations Board’
Labor and employment roundup
- If you imagine the primary goal of occupational licensure is to protect consumers, think again [Donald Boudreaux, Ramesh Ponnuru]
- “U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners Take EEOC to Task on Background Checks” [Nick Fishman, Employee Screen; Seyfarth Shaw]
- Pennsylvania lawmakers consider ending union exemption from stalking laws; Illinois, Nevada and California also shelter them from liability [Washington Examiner]
- “How Disruptive Can an Aggressive NLRB Be in a Non-Union Setting? More Than You Might Think” [Michael Fox]
- “A call for the DOL to fix what is wrong with our wage-and-hour laws” [Jon Hyman]
- Restaurant Opportunities Center, known for staging employee protests, bars own employees from same privilege [Florida Watchdog via Sean Higgins]
- Conference honoring assassinated professor Marco Biagi showcases classical liberal labor law scholarship (or so one would hope) [my comment at Workplace Prof, related call for papers, earlier]
Labor and wage-hour roundup
- Nomination of David Weil as Labor Department wage/hour chief could be flashpoint in overtime furor [Terence Smith, Hill] Another reaction to President’s scheme [Don Boudreaux, Cafe Hayek, earlier here and here]
- Oregon: longshoreman’s union says NLRB charges of blinding, threatened rape meant “to distract” [Oregonian]
- Who thinks hiking the minimum wage would kill jobs? Company chief financial officers, to name one group [Steve Hanke, Cato]
- Tourists’ casual naivete about union politics at NYC hotel made for tension, hilarity [How May We Hate You via @tedfrank]
- Just for fun: Wichita business’s creative responses to union’s “Shame On…” signs reach Round 2 [Volokh on first round, Subaru of Wichita on second round]
- Workers’ comp claims at government agencies in Maryland can be odd [Baltimore Sun via Jeff Quinton]
- Are unions losing their grip on the California Democratic Party? [Dan Walters]
Labor and employment roundup
- Second wave of retired NYC cops, firefighters arrested on 9/11 disability fraud charges, Vance says sums stolen could reach $300 million [Reuters] Related on disability fraud [Coyote]
- Members of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights blast EEOC plans on employer criminal background checks in report now put online [USCCR, Washington Times]
- Your Friends look hot: FBI details indictment of 10 unionists in 2012 arson at Philadelphia Quaker meetinghouse [FBI press release (“‘The Helpful Union Guys,’ or THUGs”); Trey Kovacs, Workplace Choice]
- Lawyers for UAW seek do-over at Volkswagen in Chattanooga [Benjamin Sachs and Jordan Grossman/On Labor, Fred Wszolek, Real Clear Policy, WRCB (views of Sen. Bob Corker)]
- Do low-wage employers benefit from government welfare programs? [Bryan Caplan]
- NLRB revives much-criticized “ambush elections” scheme [Aloysius Hogan, CEI, earlier]
- Minimum wage law makes zero sense as safety net or as redistribution [Jeffrey Miron] “In the Court of Logic, Federal Minimum Wage Loses by Nine to Zero” [Ira Stoll, NY Sun]
Free speech roundup
- Setback for climate scientist Michael Mann in defamation suit against critics [Jonathan Adler, Mark Steyn, earlier here and here; update, Mann wins a round] Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has taken interest on defendants’ side [Steyn] “Blogger’s Incarceration Raises First Amendment Questions” [NYT on Shuler case in Alabama, on which earlier; more]
- Religious liberty: “When thought is a crime, no other freedom can long survive.” [Doug Bandow]
- Nigeria’s new jail-the-gays law is brutally repressive toward speech and association. Oil-rich country gets upwards of $500 million in US foreign aid a year [Reuters, AP and followup, Al-Jazeera]
- Members of Ramapough tribe in New Jersey sue Hollywood over “Out of the Furnace” depiction [AP]
- “California’s New Law Shows It’s Not Easy To Regulate Revenge Porn” [Eric Goldman]
- Catching up on the Ampersand case, where the NLRB got slapped down trying to restrict newspaper owner’s First Amendment rights [Harry G. Hutchison]
- Video interview with noted civil libertarian Harvey Silverglate [Cato]
Labor and employment law roundup
- On minimum wage, 1987-vintage Times beats undrinkable current Times (via @davidharsanyi) How we wish the law of demand would somehow suspend operation [The Economist, Todd Eberly]
- L.A.: four restaurant workers awarded $5.7M in age bias lawsuit [LADN]
- Highly menacing NLRB “persuader” regulations not dead [Labor Union Report] In D.L. Horton case, Fifth Circuit rejects NLRB position that pre-dispute arbitration waiving class/collective rights violates labor law [Jon Hyman, Gerald Maatman/Lily Strumwasser, WLF]
- “How Much Does It Cost To Make A Wage And Hour Case Go Away?” [Laura Reasons, Seyfarth] Banning unpaid internships a bad idea [Yglesias] Interns who sued employers can’t find jobs [CNN Money, auto-plays]
- NYU decides to let grad students unionize through non-NLRB channel [al-Jazeera]
- New headache for managers: class actions filed against employers (yes, employers) under Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) [Jottings by an Employer’s Lawyer]
- de Blasio owes SEIU big and now the bills will come due [Newsday]
Labor and employment roundup
- High times at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service [Luke Rosiak, Examiner via Jim Harper, Cato]
- 6th Circuit: In ruling company’s suit against union to be unfair labor practice, NLRB breezed past First Amendment issues [NLRB v. Allied Mechanical Services, Terry Potter/Lexology]
- “People look at me funny sometimes when I say the minimum wage law limits employee rights…” [Coyote]
- “ENDA and the Seduction of Symbolic Gestures” [Mark Lee, Washington Blade] Employers look to solve practical questions [Michigan Employment Law Connection] I’m quoted on ENDA in numerous outlets [Al Jazeera, Sydney Morning Herald, Tim Carney/Washington Examiner, more] and will be joining Ray Dunaway at 8:50 a.m. on his WTIC Hartford radio show to discuss the issue. More: ENDA explainer [Brett Kalikow, On Labor]
- If New Yorkers knew full cost of state’s scaffold law, would they demand it be fixed? [Bob Dorigo Jones]
- Disability rights group ADAPT decries DoL rule on home attendant overtime [ADAPT, Daniel Schwartz, earlier here and here]
- The Greek model of public sector employee tenure: “Nearly three years after he was convicted of murder [of the town’s mayor] and sentenced to life in prison, Savvas Saltouridis remains on the municipal payroll.” [WSJ]
Labor and employment roundup
- Following KMart settlement, new California suitable-seating class action filed against Costco [Recorder, Law360, Canela v. Costco, PDF; earlier here, etc.]
- Judge enjoins Teamsters: “members had disrupted funeral of a child, harassed mourners” [Bill McMorris, Free Beacon] “How would you feel if someone you never met from a ‘worker center’ went to your boss and said he represents you?” [Diana Furchtgott-Roth, earlier here and here] More: Eric Boehm, Watchdog.org;
- “Business Fears Of The New National Labor Relations Board Are Justified” [Fred Wszolek]
- Layoff package much nicer if you’re at Boeing, courtesy taxpayers [Seattle Times via Amy Alkon]
- “European Court of Human Rights: Religious Autonomy Trumps Right to Unionize” [Becket Fund]
- “Drink and Drive. Get Fired. Collect Unemployment Benefits? Yep, Says [Connecticut Supreme] Court.” [Daniel Schwartz]
- Judge strikes down NYC prevailing wage law [Bloomberg]
Labor and employment roundup
- NLRB comes to grief again in D.C. Circuit, this time on posting rule [Fox, Adler]
- Departing executive director of D.C. labor board: higher-ups pressed for discrimination against conservatives, whites [Hans von Spakovsky, Examiner]
- “Dollar General: Discovery request would give client list to plaintiffs lawyers” [West Virginia Record]
- Dems do themselves little credit by blocking legalization of flextime [Ramesh Ponnuru, Washington Times]
- “Government Crowded Out: How Employee Compensation Costs Are Reshaping State and Local Government” [Daniel DiSalvo, Manhattan Institute]
- Thanks to California Supreme Court, SEIU can tell dissenters we know where you live [DC Examiner, Legal NewsLine] Recalling a furor over member privacy and databases at another large union, UNITE HERE [Labor Union Report, “pink sheeting”]
- “The fact that it took forced austerity measures for Greece to fire even *corrupt* public servants speaks volumes.” [Christian Science Monitor via @radleybalko]
Recess appointments, shmecess appointments, we’ve got the power
Although the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled its composition invalid, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) “declares that it will keep doing business as if nothing happened.” [WSJ via Fed Soc Blog]
This is by no means the first face-off between the D.C. Circuit and an agency resistant to its will: for another, see this 1981 Regulation account (PDF, scroll to page 11, “Reversing the D.C. Circuit at the FCC”) of a series of showdowns between the appeals court and the Federal Communications Commission. That one ended happily for the independent agency, but then the FCC may have been on firmer ground going to bat for its right to exercise policy discretion as an expert agency than it would have for its right to be constituted improperly through unconstitutional appointments.