Category: NLRA
Election Year Creates Complexity for Employers: Verrill Dana Hosts Full-Day Conference, 2017 Annual Employment Law Update
The 2016 elections – local and national – have given rise to a number of complicated developments in labor and employment law. To help employers understand these changes and how to address them, Verrill Dana will host a full-day Annual Employment Law Update on Thursday, January 26, 2017 at...
A Bourbon Conundrum
The recent week-long strike at two Jim Beam facilities in Kentucky highlights a very interesting tension in the current workplace. Workers at the Boston and Clermont, Kentucky facilities overwhelmingly rejected the second contract proposal in two weeks, stepping out on strike on October 15, 2016. The second contract proposal...
NLRB Confronts Confrontational Clothing Ban
Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board, in Medco Health Solutions of Las Vegas, Inc. , 364 N.R.R.B. No. 115 (Aug. 27, 2016), found that a dress code policy that banned "confrontational" clothing banned federal labor law. The case, stemmed from an incident in which the Company ordered...
NLRB Blurs the Lines Between Being a Student and Being an Employee
As reported by my colleague Erik Peters last week, the National Labor Relations Board ("NLRB") has again reversed course and held that graduate students at private universities may unionize. See Columbia University , 364 NLRB No. 90 (2016). Until 2000, the NLRB consistently held that graduate students working at...
Policy to “Conduct only . . . business while at work” Found to Violate NLRA
The Casino Pauma expects employees to work while at work—a concept that is not foreign to many of us. In fact, they put the expectation into writing and placed in their employee handbook a clause which provided: "Team members are to conduct only Casino Pauma business while at work...
Benchslapped! EEOC & NLRB May Have to Pull Out Their Debit Cards
For those employment lawyers who believe that the EEOC and NLRB have tended to overreach of late (i.e., the defense bar), two separate decisions handed down against those agencies caused a distinct feeling of schadenfreude . 1 Or, as one legal scholar noted in a somewhat different context, "...
Third Circuit Holds Bankruptcy Rules “Trump” the NLRA in Case Involving the Trump Taj Mahal Casino
In September 2014, amid "deteriorating financial health" and a "desperate" financial situation, Atlantic City, New Jersey's Trump Taj Mahal filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Around that same time, the Taj Mahal was attempting to bargain with UNITE HERE Local 54 (the "Union") to renegotiate the parties' collective bargaining...
Prospero Ano y Felicidad: Feliz Navidad and an "English Only" Policy in the Workplace
As Jose Feliciano wishes us a Merry Christmas from the bottom of his heart, it is important that we as employers recognize that in order to maintain a diverse workforce we are going to be faced with some difficult questions—including whether an "English Only" policy is necessary or appropriate...
D.C. Circuit Reminds Employers in Hyundai Decision to Steer Clear of Overbroad Work Rules and Policies
Do you want your employees to work during working hours? Do you want your employees to keep confidential information private? Do you have policies that address these issues? If so, the D.C. Circuit just sent you a reminder that such policies need to be tailored in order to avoid...
AT&T’s “Prison” Break: “Inmate” Employees Lose NLRB Appeal
While many of us feel like prisoners to our cell phones (not to be confused with prisons you can buy for your cell phone or companies that appear to specialize in inmate cell phone usage), what none of us want are prisoners working on our cell phones (or landlines...
