You Can Watch, But Be Careful: 3 Things Employers Get Wrong About Watching a Union Drive

You can watch, but be careful. That is the whole lesson of the NLRB’s Amazon decision, and it is the part almost everyone is missing right now. Employers see a more Republican, more employer-friendly Board in Washington and read it as a green light to keep a close eye on the organizers in their plant.…
Read More

A Wage Class Action Falls Apart on Appeal

A federal appeals court just vacated class certification in a wage-and-hour case against Anheuser-Busch. Predominance and commonality did the work. Class certification lives or dies on Rule 23. To certify, plaintiffs must show that common questions predominate over individual ones, and that the claims share genuine commonality. The court found the certification order came up…
Read More

A No-Strike Clause Is Only as Good as the Union You Can Reach

When Teamsters Local 701 walked out at an Airgas plant in New Jersey last summer, the picket lines spread to Allentown, Pa., where Local 773 workers joined in, even though their own contract still had a no-strike clause in effect. Airgas did what a lot of employers would do. It sued the International Brotherhood of…
Read More

An OSHA Fine Has an Expiration Date. The Eighth Circuit Just Proved It.

The Eighth Circuit just tossed a $124,000 OSHA penalty as time-barred, holding the five-year statute of limitations in 28 U.S.C. § 2462 applies to the government's collection suits. What it means for employers carrying old OSHA fines.
Read More

The Union Transparency Rule Unions Don’t Want

The Department of Labor just tightened union financial disclosure rules, and the AFL-CIO raced to court to stop it. The new rule overhauls the LM-2 reports unions file under the 1959 Landrum-Griffin Act. About 104 of the largest unions will complete a new long-form LM-2 with dozens of schedules, including itemized receipts, officer travel, full…
Read More

The Faster Labor Contracts Act Clears the House

On June 9, the House passed the Faster Labor Contracts Act, 230-193. Every non-union employer should understand what this horrendous law would do. The bill targets first-contract bargaining. Unions argue employers stall until support fades. There is little empirical evidence of that, but the FLCA would force the timeline anyway. Here is the gist. Employers…
Read More