A follow-up fight for a joint employer healthcare win:
On May 21, South Sound Inpatient Physicians, PLLC asked the NLRB to throw out a union certification and order a new election for roughly 44 doctors at PeaceHealth facilities in Washington. Those providers had voted to unionize with the Union of American Physicians and Dentists in June 2024. They did so under the assumption that PeaceHealth and South Sound were joint employers, but the Board found otherwise in late April, and PeaceHealth was removed from the certification with South Sound as the sole employer.
Now, South Sound is arguing that converting a joint-employer election into a single-employer certification is a substantive change that warrants a second election or record reopening. The NLRB has not yet ruled on South Sound’s filing, but we’ll be watching to see whether the Board finds that this joint-employer reversal is enough to overturn the union certification.
Sherwin-Williams workers gave the Boilermakers the boot:
A little short but sweet entry here: 83 Sherwin-Williams production workers bid farewell to the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers.
This week, the NLRB certified a vote ejecting the union from the company’s Birmingham factory. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation aided in the effort, which included Jacob Miller filing the decertification petition. Of those who voted, 36 were in favor of ousting the union and 33 against. The union has not responded to press inquiries for a remark, nor has it filed an objection to the vote.
When ‘we deserve it’ meets the taxpayer’s bill
Who gets to decide which occupations “deserve” more money, when virtually everyone feels that way about their own paycheck?
That question runs through this The Atlantic op-ed by Nicholas Bagley, who uses the recent three-day Long Island Rail Road strike to ask whether public-sector unions truly serve the public interest. The May walkout involved five unions whose work stoppage stranded 300,000+ commuters, and taxpayers foot the bill for compensation packages that already put LIRR workers at average salaries north of $121,000, plus overtime and pensions at age 55.
Bagley points out that politics sets public sector pay, and he questions the deservingness argument. Although some might bristle at that inquiry, he does the legwork on studies involving public sector unions that have prioritized seniority over qualifications and accountability. This has, in some instances, led to worse student outcomes in schools and law enforcement practices that endangered taxpayers’ lives rather than increasing safety.
He does offer a solution for those clashes, but for employers watching from the private sector, it is a reminder that the “we deserve it” argument forgets that someone always pays for it.
UC became even more heavily unionized this week:
This week, 2,100+ University of California tech workers voted to join the CWA-affiliated University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE-CWA). The workers have not been subtle about their overriding reason for organizing, which involves their hopes to shape AI policy at the university amid waves of layoffs throughout the tech industry.
We can also guess that the union promised the moon on this issue, and that those workers will likely be disappointed in their representation. For now, however, California’s Public Employment Relations Board has yet to declare whether this group will be folded into an existing contract.
The AFL-CIO claims that this election win has qualified UPTE-CWA as “the largest tech union in the United States.” This election also means that around 8,400 tech workers are unionized at this university. Additionally, 12,000 more academic and research workers joined UAW, which would add up to at least 60,000 UC workers belonging to Shawn Fain’s union.
News flash for employers: “algorithmic management” was never a thing:
In a Bloomberg Law column, Littler attorney Alex MacDonald put the term “algorithmic management” in its place. That term has been used by critics to argue that digital tools including GPS tracking and performance incentives amount to workforce exploitation. Likewise, the 2024 DOL independent contractor rule treated technological monitoring as a form of “control” that could reclassify a contractor as an employee under the FLSA. Yet MacDonald explained why the term is not the menace it was sold as, and why it doesn’t need a jump-scare treatment.
MacDonald made a compelling case for the current DOL’s proposed rule. He argued that the monitoring and incentives described above are not evidence of control over independent contractors. They are necessary mechanisms for businesses navigating the so-called “principal-agent problem” when hiring someone they cannot directly supervise.
The DOL appears to agree, favoring a return to a traditional test: those who control their own work are probably contractors, whereas those who don’t exercise that control are probably employees. Since this is a proposed rule, we’ll see how the notice-and-comment period shakes out, but the result for employers should be less uncertainty, including for uses of digital tools.
