The NLRB and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are teaming up to provide illegal immigrants more government protection from deportation. Euphemistically stylized as a way to “support labor law enforcement operations to empower workers and improve workplace conditions,” the DHS announced an expedited process to protect immigrant witnesses when reporting suspected labor law violations.
The “deferred action” process has been available for some time, but at the request of NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, the DHS streamlined the process and is promoting it on the NLRB website.
In a late December decision, the NLRB expanded an employer’s obligation to bargain with a union in the aftermath of emergency circumstances. In Metro Man IV, LLC d/b/a Fountain Bleu Health and Rehabilitation Center, Inc., the board declared that the duty to bargain in exigent circumstances is only delayed, not extinguished. It may be prudent to add to your bargaining strategy to consider including provisions in collective bargaining agreements addressing the rights and obligations of the parties in the event of such circumstances.
Early this month a U.S. Appeals Court reversed a couple of Trump-era rules related to the timing of union elections. In a 2-1 split decision, the court claimed one of the key aspects of the rule requiring election ballots to be impounded while related unfair labor practice claims are pending violates federal labor law.
Recent efforts on two sides of the continent are taking different approaches to labor law and agricultural workers. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a provision in a North Carolina law that bars farms from voluntarily recognizing unions as their workers’ bargaining representatives as part of settlements in employment-related litigation.
In California meanwhile, it seems Governor Newsom and his cronies at the United Farm Workers and California Labor Federation are having a hard time playing nice with the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. The recent legislation promoted by the Board (AB 2183) contained a contraversial provision to sign on to a Labor Peace Compact, but along with Newsom’s signature on the bill, Newsom announced an agreement with the two labor organizations eliminating the Labor Peace Compact and mail-in voting option. In response the ALRB announced that Newsom’s agreement is not the law, and that it will enforce AB 2183 as passed.
Coming to a college gridiron near you, the Board has opened the door for student athletes to join a union. Back in 2014, the National College Players Association (NCPA) had attempted to organize football players at Northwestern University but couldn’t get the NLRB to rule on whether athletes should be considered employees. In this new gambit, the filing of an unfair labor practice has opened the door for NLRB General Counsel Abruzze to exclaim that the ULPs “have merit… based on a determination that USC, the Pac-12 Conference, and the NCAA, as joint employers, have maintained unlawful rules and unlawfully misclassified scholarship basketball and football players as mere ‘student-athletes’ rather than employees entitled to protections under our law.”
Protection of employer property privacy took a hit when the NLRB limited the ability of an employer to stop workers employed by contractors from protesting on the owner’s property. The ruling reverts to the 2011 status requiring employers to show significant interference with the use of the property or some independent reason for removing protesting contractor employees.
For decades, one of the most egregious aspects of labor law in the United States has been the double standard that allows unions and unionized employees to get away with violence and property destruction that would put any other citizen in jail. A case before the Supreme Court could potentially amend this immoral loophole. In Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, at issue is whether employers can sue unions and employees accused of destroying property as a part of a labor dispute.
