A National Labor Relations Board compliance office was sentenced to serve 52 months in prison for stealing more than $400,000 from back pay funds intended for employees involved in unfair labor practice cases. As a compliance officer, Hector Martinez was responsible for disbursing back pay to employees in NLRB cases, but the government alleged he…

The NLRB voted 3-1 to revise its backpay formula for compensating workers found to have been unlawfully terminated, ordering an employer to pay for a former employee’s interim-employment and search-for-work expenses. The Board had previously treated those types of expenses as offsets that reduced the amount of interim earnings that were then subtracted from gross…

National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Richard Griffin instructed NLRB Regional Offices to request employees be reimbursed for job search costs and work-related expenses they incur due to violations of the National Labor Relations Act. This order modified a 2011 order by then acting-general counsel Lafe Solomon. Solomon wrote that the Board’s practice was to…

The Board’s determination to force employers to pay the taxes on back pay employees received as the result of filing an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB was invalidated by the Noel Canning decision. But a few months later, the Board re-ruled in the same way on the same case. Employers must pay Social…

In 2003, CNN terminated its relationship with its unionized subcontractor Team Video Services, LLC (TVS). TVS  provided CNN with camera crews and other technicians. CNN then created new, non-union positions to replace the TVS workers and hired about 2/3 of TVS’s employees for those positions. The NLRB did not believe CNN’s argument that it terminated…

Employee Neel began working at a call center in early 2011 that solicited donations for non-profits. He was instrumental in organizing workers into a union, was elected union steward, and became a member on the union negotiating committee. Neel was fired in 2012 for breaking multiple protocols while on the phone. Yet, the Board ruled…