Employees who have access to an employer’s email system as part of their job may now, during non-working time, use the email system to communicate about wages, hours, working conditions, and union organizing issues notwithstanding corporate policies restricting email to business purposes only. Most businesses view this as an unprecedented taking of their private property.…

In a fascinating case of brinksmanship, Trump Entertainment, which owns Atlantic City’s Trump Taj Mahal casino, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September citing, among other reasons, the decline in Atlantic City’s gambling market, debt, and significant tax increases. The Bankruptcy Court agreed to allow the Company to break its contract with the union…

From Columbus Business First – Unions representing hotel workers in New York City are pushing the Democratic National Committee to take union representation into consideration when choosing between New York, Philadelphia and Columbus for the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Capital New York reports. In particular, they’re pointing out that New York City’s unionized hotels represent…

For the first time, Congress approved a bill that allows the retiree benefits of distressed union multi-employer pension plans to be cut. A multi-employer pension plan is where a group of employees in the same industry join unions to provide pension coverage to retirees. Of the 1,400 multi-employer plans in the U.S., hundreds either have…

A postal workers union recently filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board over the U.S. Postal Service’s handling of a recent data breach. If successful, companies can add union negotiations to the already robust list of concerns companies must attend to during cyber-attacks. This is the first time a union…

Yesterday, I warned that the NLRB’s ruling to allow employees to use company-provided email systems for union organizing was perhaps the first of a flurry of pro-union rulings to be released between now and the end of the year. Today the NLRB “modernized” its union election procedures. The Board’s “modern” representation procedures are heavily slanted to…