Posts tagged National Labor Relations Act
Op-Ed: Biden’s joint-employer rule is bad for workers
November 9, 2023 // Included in the Employee Rights Act are the commonsense provisions of the Save Local Business Act, which would provide much-needed clarity in determining joint-employer status and prevent franchise owners from becoming corporate middle managers. More specifically, the bills amend the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act to clarify that two or more employers must have “actual, direct, and immediate” control over employees to be considered joint employers. It rolls back a convoluted joint-employer scheme that threatens job creation and undermines the American dream, and it restores a commonsense definition of employer to provide certainty and stability for workers and job creators. Simply put, the Employee Rights Act seeks to update our nation’s labor policies to match the needs of the 21st-century worker and workforce.
Unions’ power ebbs and flows
November 6, 2023 // Unionization efforts have expanded but many are taking place where there is little history of organized labor, creating a higher bar for workers. Colvin points to Starbucks workers who have seen union drives clipped in the last year. Starbucks has been accused of chilling organization by closing unionized stores and firing pro-union workers. There are also limits for organizers under current labor law. That means that what worked in the auto workers' labor campaign, for example, may not be possible for other industries.
Dartmouth Men’s Basketball Makes Employment Case at NLRB
October 6, 2023 // Houston also noted that Dartmouth can recruit a basketball player, provide him need-based financial aid, and then, for one of many reasons, dismiss the player from the team after he enrolls. If the student remains enrolled at Dartmouth as a student, he’ll continue to receive financial aid. That point was designed to show the aid is based on being a student, not a player. Houston also stressed that athletes at Dartmouth are repeatedly told they must prioritize their education and class attendance, including when there are scheduling conflicts with the team. He further said that the athletic department “has no say over admissions,” decisions for which are made by the admissions office, nor does the athletic department have any say over financial aid, and that aid itself has nothing to do with athletic talent.
Analysis: Workers have more bargaining power amid changing labor landscape | Tatiana Bailey
September 12, 2023 // And here’s the monkey wrench. Some of these worker asks are related to disruptive technological changes like artificial intelligence, better known as AI, and alternative energy. For example, Hollywood writers don’t want entertainment companies to use AI to write scripts. Auto workers are worried about their job security because of electric vehicles. Unionized workers, in particular, are trying to secure a bigger piece of the pie as it relates to corporate executive pay, but they are also trying to secure their place in a world that is likely shifting to fewer workers and more technology. It’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out.
My job, my choice: The National Labor Relations Act does not require unionization
September 7, 2023 // “[A]mbiguities of language and the absence of enforcement powers [in the NIRA] have enabled a minority of employers to deviate from the clear intent of the law and to threaten our entire program with destruction,” Wagner said in a March 11, 1934, New York Times op-ed. He repeatedly stressed it had to be the individual worker’s decision to join a union, and bristled at the claim that the Recovery Act pushed workers into unions. “[T]his bill does not do anything of this kind except that it does make a worker a free man so he may decide whether he wants a union or not,” and, Wagner said during the Senate hearings on the legislation, “if he wants one, what particular union he wants to represent him, or whether he wants to remain unorganized.” The text of the NLRA does state that federal policy favors “encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining,” but those words are almost always taken out of context. They follow a long preamble about “eliminat[ing] the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce.”
From Strikes to New Union Contracts, Labor Day’s Organizing Roots Are Especially Strong Across the Country This Year
September 5, 2023 // The first U.S. Labor Day celebration took place in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882. Some 10,000 workers marched in a parade organized by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor. A handful of cities and states began to adopt laws recognizing Labor Day in the years that followed, yet it took more than a decade before President Grover Cleveland signed a congressional act in 1894 establishing the first Monday of September as a legal holiday.
Looming auto strike puts Biden’s labor loyalty to the test
September 1, 2023 // On Monday, the Treasury Department sent a love letter to unions in the form of a new report, arguing that unions are central to the U.S. middle class. “The Biden-Harris Administration recognizes the benefits of unions to the middle class and the broader economy and is committed to fulfilling the policy objectives of the [National Labor Relations Act],” the report said. While unions are seeing a surge in popularity in the U.S., organized labor has been in long-term decline, with union participation rates falling by half since they first started being measured in the early 1980s.
Starbucks’ ‘overbroad’ workplace civility rule oversteps NLRA, Board rules
August 17, 2023 // On the heels of its Stericycle ruling, which increased scrutiny of employer handbooks, NLRB said Starbucks must rescind its “How We Communicate” workplace policy.
New Flyer Employee Slams CWA Union with Federal Charges, Claims Union Lied to Employees to Attain “Majority Status”
August 10, 2023 // Mabrey’s charges explain that CWA union officials gained power in his workplace through a process called “card check,” which bypasses the NLRB’s standard secret ballot election process for installing a union. Under card check, employees are denied the right to vote in private on whether they want the union in the workplace, and union officials can instead claim majority status by demanding union authorization cards directly from workers. The card check scheme’s lack of privacy exposes workers to a variety of coercive behaviors from union officials who are seeking to collect cards from a majority of employees in a work unit. Workers often report being told signing the card only requests “more information” about the union or serves some other purpose, even though the card will be equivalent to a “vote” in favor of union representation. Workers have also experienced threats and unwanted home visits during card check campaigns.
With strike talk prevalent as UAW negotiates, labor expert weighs in
August 8, 2023 // “The biggest tool that management has in an economic strike is it can replace these workers permanently, and so the workers may never get their jobs back even if they want them back. The strike wasn’t per se illegal, but that doesn’t mean they have a permanent right to their job back if the strike ends,” Masters said. Not all workers face the same risk of replacement, however. It’s impractical to contemplate permanent replacement workers at companies like UPS, where Teamsters members are currently voting on a tentative agreement, because of the scale of that operation and the pressure to settle a contract because of the potential loss of business, Masters said. In the case of the auto industry, Detroit Three automakers can do some stockpiling of vehicles but would likely have limited capacity to prepare that way for an extended strike and would risk losing too much business to competitors as well should a dispute drag on too long. Those same factors might not favor Hollywood actors or writers, who are currently engaged in their own high-profile strikes, Masters said, noting that some of the companies involved in those sectors might be more motivated to try to break the unions. “Not all workers are equal in terms of their replaceability. I think that’s the touchstone,” he said, noting the 1981 strike by air controllers that ended in a mass firing by then-President Ronald Reagan as an example of what can go wrong for workers in a strike.