It’s Friday, and we have five labor-related stories that you might not have heard yet:
⚖️ 🧑⚖️ 💭 One is the loneliest (Board) number:
Although Acting NLRB General Counsel William B. Cowen is certain that the Board will catch up on a case backlog soon, it’s looking lonely at the top. The Board still lacks a quorum, and after Chair Marvin Kaplan’s term ended, Democrat David Prouty currently sits as the sole Board member.
This hasn’t happened since 2002. Yet the Senate should move forward on Trump’s two GOP nominees after Labor Day, although the fate of GC nominee Crystal Carey’s confirmation continues to be ambiguous.
Related: Following the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that the Board’s structure is unconstitutional, grocer Hannam Chain USA sued the NLRB while challenging Cowen’s authority to bring charges against the company.
🏈 Football season is here, and Big Labor bought a ticket:
An indoor pro football team, the Colorado Spartans, has been unionized by the Teamsters. The deep-pocketed union also signaled its intent to push further into pro sports, and folks, poaching is alive and well.
Granted, this Teamsters move isn’t *quite* as off-brand as the United Auto Workers counting higher education workers as about a quarter of their membership or the Machinists pursuing pharmacists. Yet it’s a reminder that Sean O’Brien’s union could be lurking anywhere and looking to claim a 10-yard penalty against seemingly random employers.
🤬🩺 A nurse’s ‘vendetta’ passes an NLRB judge’s muster:
An administrative law judge (ALJ) caused legal double takes by ruling that a hospital illegally terminated a registered nurse for posting on Facebook about holding a “vendetta” toward a leader. The ALJ found that the nurse’s private post was protected concerted activity under the NLRA, and she must be reinstated with back pay.
The case’s facts include the nurse’s allegations of workplace harassment and retaliation, and the ALJ found that she exchanged messages with coworkers about workplace conditions. The nurse also claimed that she didn’t intend to bring physical harm, but it’s hard to imagine how the ALJ’s prescribed remedy of reinstatement will work out.
To that end, employment attorney and Lee Meier partner Cary Burke called this ALJ ruling “out-of-touch” and “absurd.” He believes that if the case lands with the Board, this ruling won’t stand, and perhaps Pier Sixty, LLC, which the ALJ cited as precedent, could go down for the count, too.
🧠🤖 The AI competition between tech titans is going down:
The weekly onslaught of AI-related news buried an entertaining scuffle between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and xAI CEO Elon Musk.
As we discussed last week, Zuckerberg began to cool his hiring jets in the race to build superintelligence, but a new report claims that Meta is still sprinting to roll out the next Llama AI version. And meanwhile, Musk is reportedly poaching key tech talent from Meta’s AI division.
Yet if you’re satisfying your munchies while spectating this tech titan war, you might notice that some industries are rolling back their AI usage. For example, Taco Bell is already reconsidering its drive-thru voice bots due to consumer pushback and untamable glitches.
☀️🌴California’s workers stay union-friendly, for now:
The Golden State’s labor-laboratory status is largely due to SEIU’s heavy lobbying within the healthcare and food service sectors. So, it’s no surprise that UC Berkeley’s “State of the Unions: California Labor in 2024” report claims “steady” union density, but that doesn’t change the reality that nationwide private sector union density remains low by historic standards.
There’s another twist, though. The SEIU’s maneuvering that led to boosting the state’s fast-food minimum wage hasn’t gone as well for workers as advertised. The fallout included layoffs as higher labor costs hit employers. This side effect, along with an overall job decline in California, will be one of several factors to test unions’ plans to stay “strong” through 2025.
