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In this issue:
Union Bailout Update Bill Would Permit Merit Pay in Union Shops Machinists Striking Once a Member Always a Member Labor Relations Insight, Sticky Fingers and more…
NOTICE: You can make a PDF of this issue of INK directly from the post. Click here for instructions on how to do so.
http://lrionline.com/easy-way-to-make-our-posts-and-ink-issues-into-pdfs
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Labor Relations Insight by Phillip Wilson
What have we learned in the first week of the “ambush election” rules?
There are two questions I’ve been asked a lot over the last couple of months, and especially in the last week:
Will petitions increase after the new “ambush election” rules go into effect? How far will election times decrease under the new “ambush election” rules?
Here’s what we’ve seen
Continue reading INK May 10, 2012
 Since those controversial “recess” appointments that kicked off the new year it’s been quiet over at the NLRB – almost too quiet – but not anymore.
On March 15, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked the Court of Appeals to add its recess appointment challenge to an appeal of a Board ruling against a small bottling company in Washington State, Noel Canning. The Chamber will challenge the constitutionality of the President’s emergency “recess” appointments, arguing in part that the appointments denied the Senate’s Constitutional right to review all candidates.
Ironically, the one “recess” appointee the Senate did have the opportunity to vet, Republican Terence Flynn was accused last week of breaches of ethical conduct by an internal Board investigation. As a result, Flynn could lose his appointment.
Flynn was
Continue reading Union Bailout Update
 Over the next month the Board will also be busy rolling out new Web pages that emphasize to employees their right to participate in “concerted activity” with or without a union presence. Although currently 90% of the NLRB’s workload comes from complaints around union-related activity, the Board is apparently now keenly interested in expanding its meddling into shops that don’t even have a union in the mix…just yet.
The Board is creating new web content to capitalize on what will likely be its website’s highest traffic levels ever on and around Poster Day, April 30. Employers are expected to make repeated visits to download materials or check for updates, and their employees will then (in theory) swarm the site as
Continue reading Posting Rule Update: Brace for Concerted Activity!
Lafe Solomon, acting General Counsel of the NLRB issued a memo to all Board staff recently reflecting on the awesome accomplishments of the Board and its field agents in 2011 including:
> 1,423 “initial representation elections” were conducted to provide workers an opportunity to vote on whether to form a union;
> 89 percent of initial elections were held pursuant to an agreement between the employer and the union – exceeding the agency’s goal of 85 percent;
> 91.7 percent of all initial elections were conducted within 56 days – exceeding the agency’s goal of 90 percent;
> 38 days was the median time between the filing of a petition and the election – “well below” the agency’s goal of 42 days; and
> 33 days was the median amount of time necessary for NLRB Regional Directors to issue decisions before the election when the election was contested.
So what’s
Continue reading Note to NLRB: So what’s the problem again?
The Bradford Pears are in full bloom and about every other trip from my house these days is to a drug store. It must be spring.
Speaking of things that make me sick, it’s been a mercifully mild winter in Washington DC too. That was probably planned so we could fully enjoy the Republican primaries, which are beginning to make me wish that the NLRB was in charge of those elections too. They certainly could use some streamlining.
While things are popping up all over my yard, so too are things popping on the labor front. Last week The District Court of Washington DC ruled that the NLRB could require employers to post its notice of (some) rights under the NLRA, but could not adopt two enforcement provisions. Instead, the Board must treat enforcement of the notice posting requirement the way it has to treat other issues it oversees –
Continue reading Labor Relations Insight by Phil Wilson: Notice Posting FAQs
 In what is being viewed as a big victory for Big Labor, a federal judge last week upheld the NLRB poster rule set to go into effect on April 30. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson waved off plaintiff arguments that the poster requirement was an infringement on the First Amendment rights of employers, calling the rule “a reasonable means of promoting awareness” of the right of employees to engage in union activity. “Nothing in the notice posting suggests that employers favor collective bargaining activities, and nothing in the regulation restricts what the employers may say about the board’s policies,” she wrote. The National Federation of Independent Business and other business-interest groups are expected to appeal.
However the judge went on to rule against the NLRB,
Continue reading Union Bailout Update
Click to download the 46 page district court opinion
The NLRB final rule requiring employers to post a notice of employee rights under the National Labor Relations Act was partially overruled today in a lawsuit filed by the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Right to Work Committee. The District Court DID NOT rule that the notice posting requirement was invalid (that means that you probably will have to post the notice on April 30, 2012, unless that is enjoined in another lawsuit). What the Court did strike down were the two penalty provisions making failure to file an unfair labor practice and tolling the statute of limitations where an employer
Continue reading Breaking News: NLRB Notice Posting Rules Partially Blocked
A motion to dismiss an NLRB injunction was filed in federal court two weeks ago that could prove to be the first real test of the constitutionality of President Obama’s “recess without a recess” appointments to the NLRB.
The new five-member Board requested its first 10(j) injunction on Jan. 25 against Renaissance Equity, the owner of a Brooklyn apartment complex. Renaissance locked out its unionized employees 15 months ago after SEIU 32BJ rejected the company’s request for drastic wage and benefit cuts. The Board’s injunction would force Renaissance to bring back locked out employees at 2010 pay and benefit levels.
The company’s motion to dismiss that injunction argues that the Board “lacks the statutorily required quorum of three members necessary to authorize the filing of the petition” as
Continue reading Union Bailout Update
 The last Board decision of 2011 was on the surface unremarkable and easily overlooked in the outrage over Obama’s Board appointments on Jan. 3. However according to Lexology, there are powerful clues buried in 2 Sisters Food Group on what to expect from the NLRB in the coming year. (Spoiler alert: things can get much scarier than just elections in ten days.)
The 2 Sisters decision itself was a no-brainer – the company was found to have illegally terminated a leader of the unionization effort. A finding of illegal termination is generally enough alone to overturn a close election. However the bulk of what Members Becker and Pearce wrote on 2 Sisters considered issues that had no bearing on their decision to
Continue reading Can You Guess What’s Next From the NLRB?
Senator Rand Paul announced on Monday he was joining the legal challenge of President Obama’s “recess without a recess” appointments to the NLRB. Paul is the first member of the Senate to legally object to the appointments and plans to file a friend-of-the-court brief in support of legal action by the National Federation for Independent Business and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The groups are arguing that the NLRB appointments, and Richard Corday’s appointment to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, are unconstitutional.
“With the recent recess appointments, President Obama has circumvented our Constitution and showed complete disregard for the separation of powers,” Paul said in a statement Tuesday. “He has demonstrated once again that he is willing to treat the office of the presidency like a dictatorship.”
Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee will begin hearings this week on the effect the President’s actions may
Continue reading Union Bailout Update
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