A discharged Cummins, Inc. plant worker who wasn’t a union member may be entitled to have the Machinists union pay his lost wages after the union refused to arbitrate his complaint contesting the firing. Machinists Talbot Lodge No. 61 represents all of the production and maintenance employees at a Tennessee Cummins plant, but a union…

A marble contactor dropped out of a multi-employer bargaining unit and informed the union it would be terminating an existing CBA when it expired. The company also informed the workers it would implement new employment policies like modifications to wages and health insurance, stopping contributions to the union’s pension plan, as well as implementing flexible spending accounts,…

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…

Illegal aliens who want to sue their employers for unpaid wages should do so in federal court in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, or South Dakota. Not in New York, D.C., or Connecticut. An employer failed to properly complete Form I-9s verifying its workers’ employment eligibility. The workers sued for unpaid minimum and…