Keeping Up with the Changing Landscape of Joint Employer

NLRB Tightens its Joint Employer Standard In 1984 the NLRB issued a decision known as TLI, Inc. that set the standard of when it would find two or more companies to be joint employers. There, joint-employment would only be found when both entities actually exercised direct or immediate control over the employment of the same workers.…
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NLRB Removes Consent Requirement for Temp Workers’ Inclusion in Bargaining Units.

This is an issue that has ping-ponged at the NLRB over the years. For decades, the rule was that if a union petitioned to represent direct / permanent employees at a work site along with temporary employees provided by an outside entity, both of the employers (the company and the temporary agency) would have to…
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Worker Complaints Over Tips Not Protected Says NLRB

The firing of a New York airport porter who refused to help a French soccer team with their bags, saying they were “poor” tippers, was legal because the complaint about tips was not a protected concerted employment activity, a NLRB judge ruled Friday. The NLRB brought the case, claiming that the worker’s complaint about the…
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Locking Out Workers: A Landmine of Legalities

A swimming pool cleaning supply manufacturer was negotiating a successor collective bargaining agreement with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. After the Union rejected several healthcare plan proposals made by the Company, the Company said it wanted to freeze the current contract for one year, but also said it expected to have information on…
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Right to Work is Reserved for States to Decide, not Counties

About half of the states in the United States are what is called “right-to-work” states where employees do not have to join a union to work at a unionized company. Section 14(b) of the National Labor Relations Act specifically states, “Nothing in this Act shall be construed as authorizing the execution or application of agreements…
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Division between Tenure and Non-Tenure Track Faculty Important in Union Organizing

All full-time and part-time non-tenure track faculty at the University of Southern California were included in a proposed bargaining unit seeking to be represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). While adjunct faculty have been unionizing in droves lately, this nuanced division between tenured and non-tenured faculty is interesting. Here, USC argued unsuccessfully that…
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