Posts tagged employees
Bergen Record reporters vote to walk out
March 14, 2025 // Print circulation at The Record is down by over 90% since Gannett purchased the newspaper from the Borg family in 2016 and now prints less than 14,000 newspapers daily.
GOP lawmakers demand info on Biden-era spending used to declare student-athletes as employees
March 3, 2025 // While the change in how college athletes are treated has been welcomed by many, others have been concerned about the move's potential implications. Earlier this month, the Trump administration rescinded the Biden administration NLRB's September 2021 memo insisting college athletes be recognized as employees under federal labor laws. The Trump administration this month also revoked guidance issued by President Joe Biden on his way out of the White House that required schools to distribute direct NIL payments equally to female and male athletes. Aaron Withe, an expert in government unionization and a former college athlete, said he fears continued momentum toward viewing college athletes as strictly employees will destroy college sports. "Are unions going to step in between a coach and their athletes for yelling at the players, or because practice went long or because they're making them run an exceptional amount of lines?" Withe wondered. "If you're represented by a union, they're now your bargaining agent. You have no ability to go represent yourself in anything with the university if it is deemed they are your employer. You've got no ability to go negotiate with them anymore."
Walberg, Allen to NLRB: How Much Taxpayer Money Did Biden-Harris Spend Trying to Unionize Student Athletes
March 2, 2025 // “In September 2021, General Counsel Abruzzo issued a memorandum to NLRB field offices taking a ‘prosecutorial position’ that certain student-athletes were employees under the NLRA. The memo further stated she would pursue an independent violation of NLRA Section 8(a)(1) in ‘appropriate’ cases where an employer misclassified players as student-athletes rather than as employees.” The letter continues: “General Counsel Abruzzo’s attempts to impose the Biden-Harris administration’s misguided priorities on the student-athlete population would have caused significant consequences. Student-athletes would have lost the ability to negotiate their own deals with universities, and classifying these student-athletes as employees could have hindered their ability to transfer between schools.
NLRB’s in-house tribunal undermines fairness and rule of law
February 25, 2025 // Nick felt he’d followed proper procedure and compiled thorough evidence to support his case. But none of it mattered. The NLRB doesn’t have to prosecute its allegations in a proper court of law. In fact, it doesn’t even have to go beyond its own walls. The agency’s general counsel filed the case in-house, applied the NLRB’s own rules (that toss aside standard rules of evidence), and held a hearing in front of an NLRB-employed administrative law judge (ALJ) at the NLRB’s offices. Any appeal of the ALJ’s decision goes to the NLRB itself. Unsurprisingly, the ALJ in Nick’s case ruled against the restaurant and ordered it to rehire the eight employees with backpay. The NLRB affirmed the ALJ’s decision, including her order to Hiran Management to compensate the employees for any “foreseeable” harm that purportedly resulted from the terminations. These so-called “compensatory damages” are not authorized under the National Labor Relations Act. But the NLRB “discovered” this authority in December 2022—90 years after the labor act was adopted.
Acting NLRB Counsel Rolls Back Many Biden-Era Labor Memos and Begins Process of Changing U.S. Labor Laws: What Employers Need to Know
February 18, 2025 // Overall, GC Cowen’s memo impacted 31 prior GC memos issued between 2021 and 2025 (yes, some of these were hurriedly issued in January prior to the presidential inauguration). Some of the most impactful memos that are no longer in effect include: Contending that most non-competition agreements violate federal labor law Prohibiting “stay or pay” provisions Characterizing student-athletes as employees
New Seasons labor strike enters ninth day amid calls for reinstatement
February 6, 2025 // NSLU has urged a customer boycott until a fair first contract is reached. The union has been negotiating its first contract with New Seasons Market for over two years, and has filed multiple Unfair Labor Practices charges, some of which have been resolved in the union's favor. The Union will hold public collective bargaining sessions, starting Feb. 18
The strike against Amazon is over but Teamsters warn: ‘Stay tuned’
December 28, 2024 // The workers in Staten Island voted in favor of representation by the Amazon Labor Union in April 2022. However, even though the National Labor Relations Board certified that vote result, Amazon continues to challenge it in court and won’t recognize the win by a union. Amazon also does not believe that a vote by union members to shift from being represented by the ALU to being affiliated with the Teamsters earlier this year was legally binding. And while the Teamsters announced earlier this month that a majority of employees at San Bernardino signed cards saying they want to be in the Teamsters, there has been no formal vote held there.
Love Is Blind contestants are employees, rules National Labor Review Board
December 13, 2024 // All of this can be seen as a new government front in the brewing war between reality TV producers and reality TV contestants, which got a big shot in the arm last year when former Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel began organizing efforts to get participants in reality shows better pay and more protections for their work,
COMMENTARY: Californians Can Still Be Their Own Boss in the ‘Gig Economy,’ Also Known as the Free Market
August 6, 2024 // “Furloughed Californians stand on the verge of being wiped out financially because the law prevents them from working part time in a variety of indispensable positions,” read a letter from more than 150 of California’s leading economists and political scientists. “Blocking work that is needed and impoverishing workers laid-off from other jobs are not the intentions of AB-5, but the law is having these unintended consequences and needs to be suspended. Gov. Gavin Newsom declined to suspend the measure, but went on to violate his own rules on masks and impose a rigid lockdown on the people.
Teaching doctors to unionize
June 27, 2024 // Once mostly self-employed or part of physician-owned groups, doctors are increasingly employees of hospitals or private equity firms. And, as employees, they have a right to organize, prompting unions of all stripes to make the case. Doctors who’ve joined say they’re persuaded by a desire to reclaim control over their lives, and to bargain for better pay and work conditions that they believe private equity and hospital ownership threaten.