On July 24, 2024, Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida dealt Florida teachers unions a critical blow in their attempt to overturn Senate Bill (SB) 256 regarding public-sector union...more
Public-sector employers in Florida will want to make certain they are in compliance with new restrictions on non-public safety unions (i.e., unions representing public-sector employees other than police officers,...more
On March 24, 2023, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law two significant pieces of legislation amending Michigan labor laws: Public Act (“PA”) 9 (2023), and its private sector equivalent, PA 8 (2023). Together, both...more
Municipal workers in Colorado won the right to form unions with Colorado’s Collective Bargaining by County Employees Act, which goes into effect in 2023 and provides a significant expansion of collective bargaining rights for...more
On September 2, 2022, the General Services Administration (GSA) issued a final rule regarding union access to GSA facilities. The changes, which are effective immediately, come following a White House Task Force on Worker...more
As covered in a recent post, employees at a Greenville Starbucks location became the first Starbucks employees in South Carolina to vote to unionize. Since then, employees at two other South Carolina stores in Anderson and...more
This past Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit lifted the stay on implementing the Emergency Temporary Standard to Protect Workers from Coronavirus (ETS) issued by the federal...more
For the first time in nearly fifty years, certain public sector employees in the Commonwealth of Virginia will have an opportunity to pursue collective bargaining agreements with their employers. Although public employees in...more
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 landmark ruling in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018), which made it illegal for public sector labor unions to...more
President-elect Biden has long been allied with the labor movement, and during his tenure as vice president, the administration pursued policies favorable to organized labor. The same should be expected following his January...more
When it comes to whether unions have a right to enter an employer’s premises over the employer’s objections, California’s law is the polar opposite of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the law in most other states....more
On Tuesday, seven elected officials from various local government bodies challenged a recently enacted California state law that prohibits a public employer from “deter[ing] or discourag[ing] public employees from becoming or...more
Five In-Home Supportive Service (“IHSS”) providers filed a class-action lawsuit last month challenging their union’s practice of deducting union dues despite their quitting the union. The workers allege their First Amendment...more
On June 20, 2019, Oregon governor Kate Brown signed House Bill (HB) 2016 into law. The legislation brings sweeping changes for public sector employers and unions in an effort to increase unions’ direct access to represented...more
In Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, No. 16-1466 (June 27, 2018), the Supreme Court of the United States significantly expanded the rights of nonunion public employees by...more
In its 1988 Beck decision, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that non-union members who were part of a collective bargaining unit could not be assessed dues for purposes other than collective bargaining or other matters...more
On February 22, 2018, in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Janus that fair share fees for public sector employees are unconstitutional, the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 150, filed a lawsuit...more
It’s hard to keep up with the news these days. It sometimes feels like you can’t step away from your phone, computer, or TV for more than an hour or so without a barrage of new information hitting the headlines—and you’re...more
On the final day of the Supreme Court’s just-completed term, it issued its long-awaited decision in Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, changing the labor law landscape as we know it. The case involved the compulsory “fair share”...more
It did not take long; on June 13, 2018, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York challenging amendments to the New York Civil Service Law that were designed to...more
As of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, state laws requiring public sector collective bargaining agreements to contain agency shop...more
On June 27, 2018, the United States Supreme Court issued a groundbreaking decision in Janus v. AFSCME eliminating the public sector fair share requirement and thus changing the face of public sector labor. The Janus case,...more
The decades-long battle over union security faces two important pivot points during the summer of 2018. On June 27, 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States handed unions a major defeat in the season’s first major fight. ...more
On June 27, 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States announced its decision in a case that tested the constitutionality of requiring mandatory payment of “fair share” union dues to be paid by non-member public sector...more
Mark Janus, an Illinois child welfare worker, decided not to join the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees -- the union that represents his public sector co-workers. Under Illinois law, however, Janus...more