#National Labor Relations Board

[b3aches]

Companies That Union-Bust Must Now Automatically Recognize Union, NLRB Rules

The National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling on Friday that changes the framework for unionizations, making it easier for workers to organize and harder for companies to fight back against them. The new process comes as part of a decision in the case between Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, where the Board found that the employer had committed over 20 “instances of objectionable or unlawful misconduct” between the filing of the union election petition and the election itself, intending to dissuade workers from organizing.

#NLRB #national labor relations board #union #labor unions #union strong #union busting #cemex construction materials pacific #teamsters #international brotherhood of teamsters #teamsters union

[troythecatfish]

#threads #threads app #current events #social justice #human rights #important #political #political posting #politics #workers rights #late stage capitalism #capitalism #anti capitalism #national labor relations board #unions #union #labor unions #us politics #usa politics #american politics #united states politics

[dduane]

“…the NLRB said that moving forward, when unions request recognition based on majority support, employers must either recognize and bargain with a union or file a petition seeking an election.

“However, if an employer seeking an election commits unfair labor practices, the petition will be dismissed and the employer will be ordered to bargain with the union, the board said.”

This is really going to change some things in the US…

#US politics #labor law #National Labor Relations Board

[reasonsforhope]

Version that doesn't require sign-in.

"Hot Labor Summer just became a scorcher.

[On August 25, 2023], the National Labor Relations Board released its most important ruling in many decades. In a party-line decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC, the Board ruled that when a majority of a company’s employees file union affiliation cards, the employer can either voluntarily recognize their union or, if not, ask the Board to run a union recognition election. If, in the run-up to or during that election, the employer commits an unfair labor practice, such as illegally firing pro-union workers (which has become routine in nearly every such election over the past 40 years, as the penalties have been negligible), the Board will order the employer to recognize the union and enter forthwith [a.k.a. immediately] into bargaining.

The Cemex decision was preceded by another, one day earlier, in which the Board, also along party lines, set out rules for representation elections which required them to be held promptly after the Board had been asked to conduct them, curtailing employers’ ability to delay them, often indefinitely.

Taken together, this one-two punch effectively makes union organizing possible again, after decades in which unpunished employer illegality was the most decisive factor in reducing the nation’s rate of private-sector unionization from roughly 35 percent to the bare 6 percent at which it stands today...

“This is a sea change, a home run for workers,” said Brian Petruska, an attorney for the Laborers Union who authored a 2017 law review article on how to effectively restore to workers their right to collective bargaining enshrined in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which was all but nullified by the act’s weakening over the past half-century. Taken together, Petruska added, last week’s decisions recreate “a system with no tolerance for employers’ coercion of their employees” when their employees seek their legal right to collective bargaining...

Since the days of Lyndon Johnson, every time that the Democrats have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, they’ve tried to put some teeth back into the steadily more toothless NLRA. But they’ve never managed to muster the 60 votes needed to get those measures through the Senate. The Cemex ruling actually goes beyond much of what was proposed in those never-enacted bills."

-via The American Prospect, August 28, 2023

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Note: I didn't include it because the paragraphs about it went super into the weeds, but the reason all of this is happening is because of the NRLB's general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, who was appointed by Biden. In fact, according to this article, this "secures Abruzzo’s place as the most important public official to secure American workers’ rights since New York Sen. Robert Wagner, who authored the NLRA in 1935." Voting matters

#labor #labor rights #labor unions #workers rights #unions #unionize #nlrb #national labor relations board #biden #biden administration #united states #us politics #voting matters #american politics #organized labor #union busting #good news #hope #hope posting #hot labor summer #pro union

[iww-gnv]

In the latest sign of a growing backlash within corporate America to the 88-year-old federal agency that enforces labor rights, Amazon argued in a legal filing on Thursday that the National Labor Relations Board was unconstitutional. The move followed a similar argument by SpaceX, the rocket company founded and run by Elon Musk, in a legal complaint in January, and by Trader Joe’s during a labor board hearing a few weeks later. The labor board consists of a prosecutorial arm, which issues complaints against employers or unions deemed to have violated federally protected labor rights; administrative judges, who hear complaints; and a five-member board in Washington, to which decisions can be appealed. Amazon’s filing was part of a case before an administrative judge in which labor board prosecutors have accused Amazon of illegally retaliating against workers at a Staten Island warehouse known as JFK8, which unionized two years ago.

#news #labor news #amazon #spacex #elon musk #us news #national labor relations board #nlrb

[thoughtportal]

Trader Joe’s is facing a litany of union-busting charges before the National Labor Relations Board. The agency’s prosecutors have accused the company of illegally retaliating against workers, firing a union supporter and spreading false information in an effort to chill an organizing campaign.

But in a hearing last Tuesday, the grocer’s attorney briefly summarized a sweeping defense it intends to mount against the charges: The labor board itself, which was created during the New Deal and has refereed private-sector collective bargaining for nearly 90 years, is “unconstitutional.”

The argument would appear to fit inside a broader conservative effort to dismantle the regulatory state, which has taken aim at agencies tasked with enforcing laws to protect workers, consumers and the environment.

The exchange, a transcript of which HuffPost obtained through a public records request, came at the start of a trial to determine whether Trader Joe’s violated workers’ rights. Trader Joe’s’ attorney, Christopher Murphy of the law firm Morgan Lewis, informed the judge, Charles Muhl, that there was “one final thing” the grocery chain wanted to add to its defense before proceedings began.

#article #trader joes #National Labor Relations Board #huffpost #labor rights #labor unions #labor movement #workers rights #workers vs capital #labor vs capital

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Whether you call it “tattleware,” “bossware,” or “surveillance capitalism,” Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) has had enough of exploitative workplace monitoring technologies. Late last week, Casey and a handful of other Senate Democrats introduced the Stop Spying Bosses Act, which would help protect workers from intrusive employer surveillance both on and off the clock.

The legislation would require “timely and public” disclosures by companies about the data they’re collecting on employees, prohibit businesses from using surveillance practices that obstruct union organizing or monitor workers while they’re off the clock, and create a new division of the Department of Labor to regulate workplace surveillance. Sens. Cory Booker, John Fetterman, Elizabeth Warren, and Brian Schatz are cosponsoring the bill, which has also garnered support from some major labor groups.

Workplace surveillance has been a growing area of concern for Democrats in the past few years, as the shift to remote work during the pandemic has prompted increased use of employee monitoring technologies. Since the onset of the pandemic, the percentage of large companies that digitally monitor their workers has doubled, to more than 60%. At a time when managers can no longer keep an eye on workers in the office, they’ve increasingly relied on technologies such as keylogger software, geolocation tools that track workers’ physical movements, and even software that monitors worker attentiveness with webcams, using biometric data to scrutinize minute body movements and facial expressions.

Currently, federal law gives workers few protections from these kinds of surveillance practices. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 does have some safeguards against workplace monitoring, but it has wide-ranging exceptions that allow employers to keep tabs on virtually all communications for “legitimate business purposes.” Currently, no federal law requires employers to disclose that they are monitoring workers, though individual states are increasingly taking steps to protect workers’ rights. In May 2022, for example, New York passed a law requiring private companies to publicly disclose whether employees will be electronically monitored, following similar legislation in Delaware and Connecticut. In California, a bill introduced last year would eliminate tools like facial recognition and emotion recognition technologies from the workplace.

The National Labor Relations Board is beginning to address the issue at the federal level, too. Last fall, the agency’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, issued a memo indicating that companies have overreached with their aggressive surveillance. She recommended that the NLRB impose a requirement that employers tell workers about the surveillance tools they use to monitor them, the justifications for those tools, and how they use the information they collect from workers.

In the memo, Abruzzo also acknowledged “abusive electronic monitoring” could interfere with employees’ right to organize a union or engage in other protected labor activities. As I’ve written before, unions around the country are currently in the middle of negotiating how data collected on workers can be used by employers. At companies like Amazon, unionization efforts are being driven partly by a culture of relentless workplace surveillance—and in some cases employers are responding to unionization efforts by doubling down on digital monitoring. Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, used heat maps to identify its stores at risk of unionization, according to Insider.

While the bill isn’t likely to pass in a divided Congress, it’s a sign that the proliferation of workplace surveillance during the pandemic is finally getting more national attention. “As the power imbalance in workplaces continues to grow, employers are increasingly using invasive surveillance technologies that allow them to track their workers like pieces of equipment,” Casey said in a statement introducing the legislation. “The Stop Spying Bosses Act is a first step to level the playing field for workers by holding their bosses accountable.”

#us politics #news #mother jones #2023 #Sen. Bob Casey #Stop Spying Bosses Act #Department of Labor #workplace surveillance #sen. cory booker #sen. John Fetterman #sen. elizabeth warren #sen. Brian Schatz #keylogger software #geolocation #biometric data #Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 #National Labor Relations Board #Jennifer Abruzzo #Democrats

[thatwritererinoriordan]

I love the National Labor Relations Board.

I love unions.

I love labor rights.

Fuck Elon Musk. I hope all his workers unionize.

#fuck elon musk #national labor relations board #nlrb #labor rights #strength in numbers

[nationallawreview]

Following the Recent Regulatory Trends, NLRB General Counsel Seeks to Limit Employers’ Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace

Following the Recent Regulatory Trends, NLRB General Counsel Seeks to Limit Employers’ Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace

On October 31, 2022, the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “Board”) released Memorandum GC 23-02 urging the Board to interpret existing Board law to adopt a new legal framework to find electronic monitoring and automated or algorithmic management practices illegal if such monitoring or management practices interfere with protected activities under Section 7 of the…

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#Artificial Intelligence #business #government #Labor Law #legal #National Labor Relations Act #National Labor Relations Board #NLRB #Technology #Unions

[b3aches]

Board Issues Final Rule on Joint-Employer Status | National Labor Relations Board

Today, the Board issued its Final Rule addressing the Standard for Determining Joint-Employer Status under the National Labor Relations Act. Under the new standard, an entity may be considered a joint employer of a group of employees if each entity has an employment relationship with the employees and they share or codetermine one or more of the employees’ essential terms and conditions of employment, which are defined exclusively as: (1) wages, benefits, and other compensation; (2) hours of work and scheduling; (3) the assignment of duties to be performed; (4) the supervision of the performance of duties; (5) work rules and directions governing the manner, means, and methods of the performance of duties and the grounds for discipline; (6) the tenure of employment, including hiring and discharge; and (7) working conditions related to the safety and health of employees. In adopting this new standard, the final rule rescinds the 2020 final rule that was promulgated by the prior Board. The new final rule more faithfully grounds the joint-employer standard in established common-law agency principles. In particular, the 2023 rule considers the alleged joint employers’ authority to control essential terms and conditions of employment, whether or not such control is exercised, and without regard to whether any such exercise of control is direct or indirect. By contrast, the 2020 rule made it easier for actual joint employers to avoid a finding of joint-employer status because it set a higher threshold that a putative joint employer must “possess and exercise . . . substantial direct and immediate control” over essential terms and conditions of employment, which has no foundation in common law. The new rule also provides extensive guidance to parties regarding their rights and responsibilities in situations where joint-employer status has been established. “The Board’s new joint-employer standard reflects both a legally correct return to common-law principles and a practical approach to ensuring that the entities effectively exercising control over workers’ critical terms of employment respect their bargaining obligations under the NLRA,” said Chairman Lauren McFerran. “While the final rule establishes a uniform joint-employer standard, the Board will still conduct a fact-specific analysis on a case-by-case basis to determine whether two or more employers meet the standard.” The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was published by the Federal Register on September 6, 2022 and the comment period for initial comments was open until December 7, 2022. The Board received over 13,000 comments that it reviewed and considered in drafting the Final Rule. The effective date of the new rule is December 26, 2023, and the new standard will only be applied to cases filed after the effective date. Members Prouty and Wilcox joined Chairman McFerran in issuing the Final Rule. Member Kaplan dissented.

#workers rights #nlrb #national labor relations board #joint employer #Joint-Employer Status #national labor relations act

[antiwaradvocates]

The National Labor Relations Board for Region 10 (which covers GA, KY, and AL) has just de-facto ended the right to strike by ordering the Warrior Met strikers to pay back $13.3M in damages, including the cost of surveilling the strikers and of lost production time. The national NLRB could step in and fix this decision, but it is still up in the air.

Remember: 1,000 union coal miners in rural Alabama have been on strike since April 1, 2021. They’ve survived economic hardships, legal repression, and company violence for *16 months*—and they’re not goin nowhere. Donate to their strike fund here.

#Union #nlrb #national labor relations board #Alabama #coal miners #warrior met #strike #union strong

[iww-gnv]

A federal labor judge ruled Thursday that Starbucks broke the law by providing raises and additional benefits for non-union workers last year without offering those same increases to unionized staff. The ruling, first reported by Bloomberg, is a decision on the latest in a trend of allegations that Starbucks went through with a vast union-busting campaign in 2021 and 2022 as its shops increasingly considered joining an upstart barista union. Specifically, the judge ruled that the company violated the National Labor Relations Act last August by giving non-union workers a raise to at least $15 an hour, but did not extend the raises to unionized staff.

#news #nlrb #national labor relations board #starbucks union #union strong #hot labor summer #hot labor fall #barista union #baristas

[richdadpoor]

NLRB Says Companies That Union-Bust Must Recognize Busted Union

Image: rafapress (Shutterstock) The union push of the 2020s is gaining more momentum, this time from the National Labor Relations Board. New guidelines from the NLRB say that if a company opts to bust a union, that company will be forced by the Board to recognize the union. This Giant Company Owns Almost Every Dating App The NLRB announced the new framework as part of a decision in the case…

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#Cemex Construction Materials Pacific LLC #Gizmodo #Labor #Labor relations #Lauren McFerran #National Labor Relations Board #NLRB election procedures #The Blue Eagle at Work #Trade unions #Union busting #United States labor law

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

General Motors (GM.N) on Thursday made a counterproposal to the union representing its U.S. hourly workers in a bid to avoid a costly strike, but United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain called the offer "insulting."

The largest U.S. automaker said it offered workers a 10% wage hike and two additional 3% annual lump sum payments over four years in its offer to the union ahead of the Sept. 14 contract expiration.

Last week, Ford said it had offered a 9% wage increase through 2027 and 6% lump sump payments, much less than the 46% wage hike being sought by the union. The UAW has said 97% of members voted in favor of authorizing a strike if agreement is not reached.

Fain, who represents 146,000 workers at the Detroit Three, said GM's offer was "an insulting proposal that doesn’t come close to an equitable agreement for America’s autoworkers.... The clock is ticking. Stop wasting our members’ time. Tick tock."

GM shares were down 1.3% in mid-day trading.

GM said the wage hike is the largest proposed since 1999. It is also offering a $6,000 one-time inflation-related payment and $5,000 in inflation-protection bonuses over the life of the agreement, along with a $5,500 ratification bonus.

Chrysler-parent Stellantis said Wednesday it planned to make a counteroffer to the UAW this week.

GM said that under its offer, current temporary employees will receive a 20% increase to $20 per hour wage and it would shorten the time it takes to get to the maximum wage rate for permanent employees - mirroring proposals from Ford.

GM President Mark Reuss said in a video posted on Thursday "we need a fair contract that both rewards our employees and protects the long-term health of our business."

A UAW strike that shuts the Detroit Three manufacturers could cost carmakers, suppliers and workers over $5 billion, Michigan-based Anderson Economic Group estimated.

With new car inventories tight, consumer experts have said that could translate into higher car prices - an important component of inflation.

Last week, the UAW filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against GM and Stellantis saying they refused to bargain in good faith.

The union's demands include a 20% immediate wage increase followed by four 5% annual wage hikes, defined-benefit pensions for all workers, 32-hour work weeks and additional cost of living hikes. GM is proposing to give employees an additional paid holiday.

The UAW also wants all temporary workers at U.S. automakers to be made permanent, seeks enhanced profit sharing and the restoration of retiree health-care benefits and cost-of-living adjustments.

The UAW said Ford's profit-sharing formula change would have cut payouts by 21% over the last two years.

J.P.Morgan on Thursday said supply chain disruptions from a potential UAW strike would cut new vehicle production, drive up used car prices and put pressure on margins in the personal auto insurance business.

#us politics #news #reuters #2023 #united auto workers #general motors #Shawn Fain #working class #worker's rights #Detroit Three #Stellantis #Mark Reuss #Anderson Economic Group #National Labor Relations Board #unfair labor practices #collective bargaining #j.p. morgan