Adjunct professors and other contingent faculty at three California colleges recently voted in favor of joining the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). In its campaign to garner support, the SEIU cited the workers’ low wages, lack of benefits, and poor job security. Now the SEIU, through its “Adjunct Action” campaign has successfully organized adjunct professors…

The United Food and Commercial Workers union tried to organize workers at a Hillshire Brands Co. facility in Texas. As part of its campaign, non-employees handed out pamphlets at the end of the company’s driveway. The organizers stood on a 10-foot wide corridor designated by the city as a public right of way. The Company’s…

In July, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that a bargaining unit of just the fragrance and cosmetic employees at a Macy’s store was lawful. This ruling departed from decades-long precedent favoring a wall-to-wall bargaining unit at retail stores. In an odd procedural mandate, Macy’s was precluded from directly appealing the Board’s decision. Instead, Macy’s…

Phillips 66 maintained a policy that prohibited comments about “company operations” that could “reasonably be understood by employees to prevent them from commenting on their own wages or employment conditions or any labor dispute with their employer.” The Company argued, on the other hand, that the policy was intended to control disclosures about confidential operations.…

The National Labor Relations Board ordered reinstatement of a nurse who was fired for making vulgar sexual comments and jokes. Specifically, the Respondent hospital showed that it terminated the nurse after she “engaged in grossly offensive, profane, and intimidating workplace behavior that provoked an unprecedented number of her co-workers to complain of a hostile work…

The National Labor Relations Board recently overturned nearly 40 years of legal precedent prohibiting faculty members at religious universities from forming or joining a union because doing so could violate the religion clauses of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In another example of dramatically expanding the scope of Section 7 of the National…