As we reported here, California’s Senate Bill (S.B.) 399, took effect on January 1, 2025. This law prohibits employers from requiring employees to attend meetings about the company’s opinions on political or religious...more
1/21/2025
/ California ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Declaratory Relief ,
Employee Rights ,
Employment Litigation ,
First Amendment ,
Fourteenth Amendment ,
Free Speech ,
Injunctive Relief ,
Labor Reform ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
State Labor Laws ,
Unions
Last week, the Third Circuit reversed a National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) decision finding that FDRLST Media, publisher of online news magazine The Federalist, unlawfully threatened its employees when its Executive...more
5/31/2022
/ Collective Bargaining ,
Embedded Tweets ,
Employee Rights ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Labor Law Violations ,
Labor Reform ,
Labor Regulations ,
Labor Relations ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Unfair Labor Practices ,
Unions
For decades, employers had been free to gather employees to discuss – in a non-coercive manner – the employer’s views on unionization, and had been free to share with employees what employees’ rights were with respect to the...more
As foreshadowed by the NLRB General Counsel’s August 2021 Advice Memorandum, the vacillating standard for the legality of employer handbooks and policies and confidentiality requirements during open employer-investigations...more
3/11/2022
/ Boeing ,
Confidentiality Agreements ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Employee Handbooks ,
Employee Rights ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Policies ,
Labor Reform ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
NLRB General Counsel ,
Section 7
The ability to form smaller bargaining units by breaking up larger aspects of an employer’s organization—sometimes called “micro-units”—is generally seen as an effort to enhance the ability of unions to gain entry into an...more
Over the past few years, the National Labor Relations Board has frequently weighed in on employer’s workplace and employee handbook policies, examining whether an employer’s policy impacts employees’ rights under Section 7 of...more
On November 24, 2020, the Board held that a high-level executive’s tweet violated Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA by interfering with or restraining employees’ protected, concerted activity....more
In an Advice Memorandum released Thursday, the NLRB’s Division of Advice concluded that employees who discussed an employer’s tip-pooling practices engaged in protected concerted activity, such that discharging the employees...more
As we reported here, on April 1, 2020, the NLRB published its final rule making three amendments to its rules and regulations governing union elections (relating to the Board’s blocking charge policy; timing and notice...more
4/9/2020
/ Collective Bargaining ,
Comment Period ,
Construction Industry ,
Employee Rights ,
Labor Law Violations ,
Labor Regulations ,
Labor Relations ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Proposed Amendments ,
Public Comment ,
Regulatory Agenda ,
Rulemaking Process ,
Union Elections ,
Union Representatives ,
Unions
When it comes to an unfair practice allegation asserting an employer’s statement is unlawful, words matter. And, so does context. Under NLRB case law, the actual employer statements are evaluated as well as the overall...more
3/6/2020
/ Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Employee Rights ,
Employee Training ,
Interrogations ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Protected Concerted Activity ,
Section 7 ,
Temporary Employees ,
Unfair Labor Practices
Applying the facially neutral work rule test laid out in Boeing, the Board recently reversed an Administrative Law Judge decision, concluding that the employer maintained lawful workplace rules restricting employee use of (i)...more
2/24/2020
/ Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ,
Boeing ,
Confidentiality Agreements ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Employee Handbooks ,
Employee Rights ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Policies ,
NLRB ,
Protected Concerted Activity ,
Purple Communications ,
Section 7 ,
Workplace Safety
Shamrock Foods Company, 369 N.L.R.B. No. 5 (January 7, 2020) is the latest in the National Labor Relations Board’s series of employer-friendly decisions. In Shamrock Foods, the Board held that an employer did not violate...more
1/13/2020
/ Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ,
Employee Rights ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Hiring & Firing ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Reinstatement ,
Section 7 ,
Settlement Agreements ,
Termination ,
Unfair Labor Practices ,
Unions
On October 28, 2019, the Ninth Circuit, following in the footsteps of the D.C. Circuit and the Second Circuit, affirmed an order entered by the NLRB confirming that prohibitions on secondary boycotts under Section...more
10/31/2019
/ Boycotts ,
Employee Rights ,
Employment Policies ,
First Amendment ,
Free Speech ,
Labor Disputes ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Secondary Boycott ,
Strike ,
Unfair Labor Practices ,
Union Representatives ,
Unions
This summer has been punctuated by walkouts. We have seen walkouts in support of a $15 minimum wage and walkouts to protest the sale of goods to the government. Walking off the job is, of course, a staple of labor action, and...more
7/31/2019
/ Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Employee Rights ,
Employment Policies ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Protected Activity ,
Strike ,
Unions ,
Wage and Hour ,
Wal-Mart
Citing judicial criticism, as well as the original Supreme Court decisions on the issue, the NLRB swept away years of precedent permitting union representatives to access public areas of an employer’s premises.
In UPMC...more
6/18/2019
/ Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ,
Bright-Line Rule ,
Disparate Treatment ,
Employee Rights ,
New Rules ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Private Property ,
Property Owners ,
Public Access Laws ,
Public Property ,
Solicitation ,
Surveillance ,
Union Organizers ,
Union Representatives ,
Unions
During the last decade, a number of NLRB decisions faulted employers for written policies that were considered to be overbroad in violation of the National Labor Relations Act. These rulings sprang largely from the NLRB’s...more
2/27/2019
/ Appeals ,
Collective Bargaining ,
Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Employee Handbooks ,
Employee Rights ,
Employment Policies ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Section 7 ,
Union Representatives ,
Unions
The Board issued an interesting decision discussing an employer’s successful efforts to repudiate unlawful conduct, which we’ll get to in a minute. In our last post, we discussed a simmering dispute over the circumstances...more
One area of labor relations that continues to vex practitioners is the scope of the so-called Weingarten rights. NLRB v. J. Weingarten Inc., 420 U.S. 251 (1975). Some 43 years after the Supreme Court set forth the right that...more
The past few weeks on the Labor Board front have been fairly routine, save for, of course, the high drama associated with the NLRB reversing its own decision (lest anyone think this is a super significant development,...more
Google Required To Produce Emails In Response To Former Employer's Subpoena -
Negro v. Superior Court, 2014 WL 5341926 (Cal. Ct. App. 2014) -
Navalimpianti USA, Inc. subpoenaed Google, Inc. to produce copies of...more
Male Employee's Sexual Harassment Claims Should Not Have Been Dismissed -
Lewis v. City of Benecia, 224 Cal. App. 4th 1519 (2014).
Brian Lewis, a heterosexual man, sued his former employer (the City of Benecia)...more
5/14/2014
/ Age Discrimination ,
Class Certification ,
Employee Rights ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) ,
FICA Taxes ,
Fitness for Duty Exams ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Public Employees ,
Putative Class Actions ,
Sarbanes-Oxley ,
Severance Pay ,
Sexual Harassment