More than 31,000 retail workers recently walked off the job at Stop and Shop supermarkets across three states. This is the largest retail industry strike in the past 16 years. In fact, more than 10,000 retail workers have not struck in over 15 years. The union and supermarket chain disagreed in negotiations on health-care benefits,…

A new ruling favorable to companies held that successor employers that discriminate in hiring to avoid bargaining duties are free to set their own initial terms of employment so long as they did not say they would keep all the predecessor’s workers or if their hiring scheme did not unlawfully target union workers. In that…

Employees who service San Francisco’s Ford GoBike system voted to join a growing list of unionized bike-share workers when 60% of the workers chose to affiliate with the Transportation Workers Union. Workers at bike-sharing programs in seven other cities have already voted to unionize with the Transportation Workers Union. Ford GoBike is operated by a…

Currently, employers that want to ban or limit picketing or other demonstrations on their property by off-duty workers must show the activities would be disruptive to their operations. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to rule on whether federal labor law protects off-duty workers who held stationary picket signs on company property which is different…

The General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, Peter Robb, recently issued two General Counsel Memos dealing primarily with union obligations under the National Labor Relations Act. I expect the Board to adopt the GC’s recommended positions. In GC 19-04, Robb wants to overturn current law requiring unions to disclose only the percentage reduction…

Accretion petitions filed with the NLRB allow unions to add employees to an existing bargaining unit without a representation election. This helps preserve industrial stability by allowing adjustments in bargaining units when new jobs are created, without requiring an adversarial election. This has historically been applied narrowly because it infringes on an employee’s right to…