Last year, the United States Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision put an end to “Chevron deference,” a judicial practice of deferring to federal agency interpretations of ambiguous statutory language. While the legal...more
As the mainstream media has reported, President Trump is firing everyone he can (and maybe some he can’t) at the National Labor Relations Board. On day one, the president fired the NLRB’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, a...more
2/25/2025
/ Employee Rights ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Labor Reform ,
Labor Regulations ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Trump Administration ,
Unions
With Thanksgiving right around the corner, now is the perfect time to reflect on things for which we have to be thankful. In the ever-evolving world of labor and employment law, there have been several significant...more
11/27/2024
/ Chevron Deference ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Exempt-Employees ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Government Agencies ,
Minimum Salary ,
NLRB ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Threshold Requirements ,
Tip Credit ,
Tipped Employees ,
Unions
The National Labor Relations Board and unions have been busy. The NLRB received 3,286 union election petitions during FY 2024, up 27% since FY 2023 (when the NLRB received 2,593 petitions) and more than double the number of...more
We have news on two fronts:
First, the FTC Rule -
As related to the Federal Trade Commission’s nationwide ban on noncompete agreements, the FTC has appealed the federal court injunction in Texas to the federal Fifth...more
10/25/2024
/ Employees ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Federal Bans ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Final Rules ,
Legislative Agendas ,
NLRB ,
NLRB General Counsel ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Regulatory Agenda
Following several complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), SpaceX has mounted a constitutional challenge against the structure of the NLRB. Specifically, SpaceX contends that NLRB administrative judges...more
9/5/2024
/ Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ,
Administrative Proceedings ,
Chevron Deference ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Government Agencies ,
Judicial Authority ,
Labor Regulations ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
SpaceX ,
Unfair Labor Practices
The National Labor Relations Board issued yet another Starbucks decision this past week. Again, the Board upheld an administrative law judge’s opinion that Starbucks violated the National Labor Relations Act during a union’s...more
The top lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is ordering her subordinates to continue to seek injunctions against employers for alleged violations of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), despite the...more
What happens when the NLRB asks a federal court to remand a case back to the board based on a new case holding to interpret the matter before it, the court does so, and then the board pulls a “bait and switch” to flat out...more
In an 8-1 decision authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, the United States Supreme Court settled the conflict among circuits in setting the standard for issuing 10(j) injunctions sought in unfair labor practice proceedings. In...more
A National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge in San Francisco recently ruled that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy violated the National Labor Relations Act when he commented on labor unions through several media outlets....more
Can you prevent your employees from handing out pro-union paraphernalia if they’re on a paid break? After brewing on the issue, the D.C. Circuit says no, backing baristas in the first of five National Labor Relations Board...more
As we have been blogging during the Biden presidency, the National Labor Relations Board has become quite aggressive these days. The aggression toward employers has been shown in the types of conduct the Board finds to be...more
Can you enforce your uniform policy, even if that means an employee can’t wear a union t-shirt? Earlier this month, in Tesla, Inc. v. NLRB, the Fifth Circuit looked at that very question and ruled for Tesla....more
Today, the NLRB issued their Final Rule on what constitutes joint-employer status under the National Labor Relations Act. This new rule overrides the old 2020 standard, that was much stricter in what type of control had to...more
If you don’t already know, Starbucks has been in a pretty big labor dispute, and there are bound to be lessons for all of us. If your company has internal documents about relations with prospective unions, you may have to...more
The National Labor Relations Board in 2023 has continued on its pro-union path in all areas of traditional labor law. Many of the NLRB’s actions are the result of the ongoing advice memos which are being issued by General...more
8/4/2023
/ Collective Bargaining ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Policies and Procedures ,
Protected Concerted Activity ,
Union Membership ,
Union Organizers ,
Unions
Are PhD students at a private university who also teach courses and grade papers – tasks that are a part of their development but also certainly assist the university – employees who can unionize? The NLRB said yes for a...more
7/19/2023
/ College Athletes ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Employees ,
Graduate Students ,
Independent Contractors ,
NLRB ,
Private Schools ,
State Labor Laws ,
Student Athletes ,
Student Employees ,
Unions
Can you still have noncompete agreements with your employees? What if you explicitly state that the agreement protects trade secrets or other proprietary information? There has been a lot of buzz about this issue, and...more
6/15/2023
/ Confidentiality Agreements ,
Enforcement ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
NLRB General Counsel ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Non-Solicitation Agreements ,
Proprietary Information ,
Restrictive Covenants ,
Section 7 ,
Section 8 ,
Trade Secrets
Can you still have noncompete agreements with your employees? There has been a lot of buzz about this issue, and this week the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board joined the conversation with a memorandum,...more
If the NLRB finds that you have committed an unfair labor practice (and maybe more than once), just what can it do? In Noah’s Ark Processors, a three-member panel of the board recently took an opportunity to pronounce...more
In Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. Int’l Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union 174, the Washington Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether a union is responsible for property damage incident to a strike. How does that issue...more
A ruling of the National Labor Relations Board in favor of an employee fired for using vulgar language on a company bulletin board was affirmed in August by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia...more
9/22/2022
/ Adverse Employment Action ,
Discipline ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Employment Policies ,
Hiring & Firing ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Offensive Language ,
Over-Time ,
Protected Concerted Activity ,
Protests ,
Remand ,
Unfair Labor Practices ,
Unions
Last Tuesday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) published an anticipated Proposed Rule on joint employer status. The Proposed Rule, which is designed to apply for all purposes under the National Labor Relations Act...more
An employee writes “whore board” on a company bulletin board — you can fire him, right? Not according to the NLRB and now the federal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In Constellium Rolled Products v. NLRB, the employer’s...more