Tag: National Labor Relations act (NLRA)

College Athletes Are Employees? Tide Players Wouldn’t Want to ‘Bargain’ with Coach Saban

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel (GC) Jennifer Abruzzo recently issued a memorandum (GC 21-08) declaring certain college athletes will be classified as employees, giving them the right to unionize and engage in other protected, concerted activity. Read on to learn how things might play out in the real world.

Can an Employee Demand Representation While Being Disciplined?

Yesterday we explored a hypothetical employee named Bill who asked for legal representation to be present but was not himself a union member. We also explored the state of the Weingarten rights. Today we’ll look at how they apply to this situation, and what that means for Bill.

Can Employees Tell You, ‘I’m Not Meeting Without Representation’?

As an HR professional or a business owner, you may—or may not—know that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal law that governs the relationship between unions and employers in the private sector, also applies to nonunion employers in certain situations. For instance, the NLRA covers all concerted activity by employees, whether it occurs […]

Can They Do That? Firing Employees for Off-Duty Conduct

by T. Harold Pinkley Participating in last year’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—an event that involved several groups usually identified as the “alt-right,” along with groups protesting the marchers—has proven to have unforeseen and unintended consequences, including job loss, for some of the people involved. This article examines how you can or should […]

But my employees aren’t unionized! A trap for the unwary

by William J. Evans “But my employees aren’t unionized!” is a frequent exclamation uttered by employers when they learn they’ve been charged with violating their nonunion employees’ Section 7 rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). It’s a surprisingly little-known fact that the NLRA applies equally to union and nonunion workers. Accordingly, nonunion employers […]

confict

Employers in limbo as government entities differ on meaning of laws

by Burton J. Fishman When the U.S. Supreme Court opened its new term on October 2, 2017, the legal world was knocked off its axis. In a rarely seen occurrence, the solicitor general, speaking on behalf of the United States, and the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) took opposing positions on […]

Office politics: preventing disruptive discourse

by David L. Johnson Recently, a Pennsylvania YMCA stopped showing cable news shows on the TVs in its gym because they were prompting political squabbles among its members. When filtered into the diverse workplace, passionate opposing political viewpoints can harm productivity and morale and even create liability issues for employers. Sometimes political discussions can morph […]

executive

Firestorm over Google memo putting ‘diversity of thought’ in spotlight

What was meant to be an internal memo written by a male engineer at Google hit the internet in a big way in early August, igniting controversy that led to the employee’s firing and much discussion about the effectiveness of corporate diversity efforts.  The now-infamous memo raises questions on many fronts. Among them: Does it […]

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen—best practices from Top Chef

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!” That’s essentially what a group of Teamsters told Top Chef host personality Padma Lakshmi back in June 2014 outside of Steel & Rye restaurant in Milton, Massachusetts. This “episode” is now at the center of a lawsuit brought by the federal government against four […]