To block a union that would represent 2,500 faculty members, the private university echoed a corporate argument.
Labor board freeze leaves thousands of workers, from Amazon to Trader Joe’s, with few options — prompting some to consider more aggressive tactics.
From Uber and Lyft drivers to home care workers, the fate of far-reaching labor organizing efforts hangs in the balance.
Chamber of Commerce, Restaurant Association claim the law, which labor unions say is meant to prevent coercion, violates free speech.
Trump and running mate JD Vance court workers, but the former president targeted unions and labor rights while in office.
Union elections are up in the year since the labor board created new penalties for law-breaking employers. But an appeal could reverse the decision.
The friendly grocer’s staff are increasingly going union — and say the company is hostile to their efforts.
Weak labor laws allow the coffee giant to avoid contract talks.
Unionizing is not against the law; but the law is against unionizing.
Outdated 1935 federal labor act makes violations hard to prove, penalties easy to pay.
Starbucks founder’s testimony before U.S. Senate committee will be an accountability moment for coffee chain on alleged union busting.
A giant federal contractor’s failure to abide by a settlement is building pressure for Biden to take action.
Co-published by the American Prospect
The National Labor Relations Board is not just changing workplace rules but reversing longstanding precedents.
Co-published by Fast Company
24 Hour Fitness’ policies have brought the fitness chain in the crosshairs of the National Labor Relations Board, which has said the company’s employee arbitration agreements violate federal labor law.
Co-published by International Business Times
Justice Stephen Breyer has said a case pending before the Supreme Court could cut out “the entire heart of the New Deal.” It could also enrich the Trump Organization.
Co-published by The American Prospect
Workers at Tesla’s Fremont, California electric car factory have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing Elon Musk’s company of illegal surveillance, coercion, intimidation and prevention of worker communications.
We’ve written on more than one occasion here about the travesty that is the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its treatment of big-time college athletes. So obviously we take great pleasure in the ruling last week, made by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), that said football players at Northwestern University are employees and ordered an election for those employees to decide if they want to be members of the College Athletes Players Association (CAPA).
The ruling itself is one the feds can be proud of, properly reducing the question of employee status to its core issues—do the players perform a service for money, subject to the control of the person paying them the money?
With football players, the answers are pretty clear. Their coaches require them to sign a contract, make them work 60-70 hours some weeks, control their lives down to the most minute detail and in exchange give them various forms of compensation,
» Read more about: Of Football and the Limits of Labor Law »
The issues of immigration and workers’ rights are inextricably linked, as seen in the participation of 30 L.A. labor unions in today’s Citizenship Caravan to Bakersfield. The unions are joining organizations from all over California to call for immigration reform with a path to citizenship.
A less widely known example of this link is an obscure immigration program that is being used by irresponsible companies in ways probably not envisioned by the government. One of those companies is located here in Southern California and is locked in a labor dispute with its employees.
The EB-5 investor program connects wealthy immigrants with U.S. businesses seeking capital. Run by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency (USCIS), its stated purpose is to “stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors.”
In exchange for a million-dollar investment (only half a million if the business is located in a high-unemployment area) USCIS grants the investor a green card if they can prove that their investment created at least 10 jobs.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is facing the greatest crisis in its 78-year history. On Thursday, May 16, the full Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing on the president’s nominees — three Democrats, two Republicans — to the National Labor Relations Board. Without swift confirmation of these nominees, the NLRB will soon be reduced to zero members, and for the first time in board history, the president will be unable to appoint members by recess for at least a year. By blocking the nominations, Republicans appear intent on incapacitating the NLRB for much of the president’s second term.
For the past two years, Republicans and anti-union groups have gone all-out to stymie the work of the labor board, and they have found a powerful ally in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In January, in a decision that would have invalidated hundreds of presidential recess appointments over the past few decades,
» Read more about: Employers’ New BFF: DC Circuit Court of Appeals »
Atop the list of landmark laws that conservatives have never particularly warmed to are two that established fundamental rights for workers and consumers: the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which provided employees a legal path to form unions, and the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform, which established a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to rein in banks’ abusive treatment of depositors and mortgage holders. Conservatives have never had the votes or the gumption to repeal these statutes. But now they can essentially neuter these laws.
[Last] Friday, three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — all nominated by Republican presidents — ruled that President Obama lacked the authority for three appointments he had made to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during the break between Congress’s 2011 and 2012 sessions. Invoking the president’s power to make one- or two-year appointments while Congress is in recess — a power that presidents have exercised as far back as James Madison — Obama appointed two Democrats and one Republican in the face of continued Republican opposition to his previous NLRB picks. » Read more about: Court Decision Could Cripple NLRB and Consumer Bureau »