Posts tagged NLRA
Under Trump, Student Labor Organizers Face New Challenges
August 7, 2025 // Anticipating a rollback of recent NLRB precedent, some unions have withdrawn petitions for recognition, looking for other paths to continue their work.
Amazon off-duty employees can use parking lots for union activity, NLRB judge rules
August 6, 2025 // In ruling against Amazon, the ALJ explained that NLRB has long held employers may not bar off-duty employees from outside nonworking areas, including parking lots. Amazon violated Section 8(a)1 of the NLRA when it tried to do this to keep off-duty employees from engaging in protected activity, the judge held. Amazon also violated Section 8(a)1 when it called the police to further bar protected activity, the ALJ said.
Will Sussman: Columbia Students Should Decertify Their Union
August 5, 2025 // Columbia students are fed up with their union’s focus on radicalism over bread-and-butter issues. “As a Jewish Israeli student at Columbia, the union has done absolutely nothing for me,” said Alon Levin, a graduate student in electrical engineering. “I have heard more blatantly racist and discriminatory language from them than anything that would remotely resemble aiding me in, say, addressing my cost of living or my health insurance concerns.” The problem with graduate student unions is not limited to Columbia, as I learned at MIT.
Hammond poultry facility employee asks board to allow workers to vote union officials out of workplace
August 2, 2025 // Hally's request says that he submitted a petition early this month with signatures from more than 50% of his 550-person unit demanding a vote to oust the union. Normally, NLRB policy only requires 30%. “Region 15 dismissed Hally’s petition consistent with the Board’s contract-bar doctrine,” the Request for Review says. “This bar contradicts the Act’s well-established ‘bedrock principles of employee free choice and majority rule’…because it grants monopoly bargaining status…even in the face of objective evidence proving the union has lost majority support."
New Game Plan: White House and Congress Move to Clarify Student Athlete Unionization Rights
July 31, 2025 // The SCORE bill’s ban is broad. Its key provision says, in part: “no individual may be considered an employee of an institution, a conference, or an interstate intercollegiate athletic association based on the participation of such individual on a varsity sports team or in an intercollegiate athletic competition as a student athlete.” In addition, the bill blocks states from enforcing any law that “governs or regulates the compensation, payment, benefits, employment status, or eligibility of a student athlete (including a prospective student athlete) with respect to participation in intercollegiate athletics.” It specifically blocks any state law that “relates to the right of a student athlete to receive compensation or other payments or benefits directly or indirectly from any institution, associated entity or individual, conference, or interstate intercollegiate athletic association.”
Hold the Salt: Essential Takeaways from NLRB Acting GC’s Guidance On Union Salting Investigations
July 29, 2025 // The Acting GC emphasized that the investigating Regions must “no longer conclusively presume that an applicant is entitled to protection as a statutory employee” and that “neither will we presume, in the absence of contrary evidence, that an application for employment is anything other than what it purports to be.” The Acting GC also instructed the Regions to focus their initial investigations on obtaining evidence from the charging party
Cato Institute: Reforming Labor Union Laws
July 29, 2025 // The 1930s labor union laws were premised on the false idea that management and labor are enemies in the workplace, notes Baird. The reality is that individuals and businesses work together to produce products for consumers. Management and labor are complementary, not rivalrous, inputs to value generation in the economy. The new Cato study is a great introduction to federal labor union laws from a libertarian perspective. Baird concludes that American workers would enjoy more freedom and prosperity if the labor laws of the 1930s were repealed.
Michigan-Based Rieth-Riley Asphalt Worker Submits Legal Brief Urging 6th Circuit to Protect Workers’ Right to Vote Out Unpopular Union
July 28, 2025 // While Kent and his fellow employees were eventually able to exercise their right to vote on the IUOE, the NLRB in 2022 dismissed his petitions and halted the election, declining to count the already-cast ballots just hours before the vote tally, calling it a “merit-determination” dismissal. This dismissal was based on unfair labor practice allegations the IUOE filed against Rieth-Riley management in 2018. But the NLRB never held a hearing on whether those alleged practices had any connection to Kent and his coworkers’ desire to oust the union. Kent’s brief urges the Sixth Circuit to use Rieth-Riley Construction Co. as an opportunity to invalidate the NLRB’s “merit-determination” dismissal policy. The brief also asks the Court to order the NLRB to take the long-overdue step of counting the ballots in Mr. Kent’s decertification election, so he and his coworkers can properly exercise their right to vote on the union.
Lessons from Other Trades in ‘Leaving the Union:’ What Sheet Metal and HVAC Can Learn
July 28, 2025 // The stories of Brian Head and Brandon Davis are extreme, but the underlying issues are common across the trades: high financial stakes, legal complexity, and the threat of union penalties make leaving the union a daunting proposition. For sheet metal and HVAC contractors – or any skilled tradesperson – understanding the process, the potential pitfalls, and the importance of documentation is essential before making any move. And as Semmens pointed out, workers have options for legal support if they feel their rights are being violated – but the process remains anything but simple.
Louisiana Poultry Employee Challenges Federal Labor Policy Preventing Coworkers From Voting Out UFCW Union
July 24, 2025 // Worker submitted petition in which over half of his colleagues demanded vote to remove union, but so-called ‘contract bar’ kept union in power