Category: Labor Law

On September 19, 2012, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) continued its assault on an employer’s right to set and enforce reasonable workplace rules.  This time, the target was a mean-spirited employer who had to gall to fire an employee who scrawled profanities on newsletters left in a break room and then lied to an investigator when asked if he had done it.  Because the conduct occurred in the context of a union decertification...

Many employers tell employees who participate in investigations into workplace misconduct that they cannot discuss the investigation with co-workers while the investigation is ongoing. The rationale behind such rules is that it protects the integrity of the investigation and prevents witness collusion. Unfortunately, a recent decision from the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) held that such a rule violates the National Labor Relations Act...

By Darrell R. VanDeusen In 1980, the Supreme Court held that faculty members at private universities typically cannot organize and form a union under the National Labor Relations Act.  NLRB v. Yeshiva University,444 U.S. 672 (1980).  Whether this is the view of the Obama NLRB will be vetted in the coming months as interested parties have filed amicus briefs with the Board in Point Park Univ., No. 6-RC-12276, a representation case challenging...

By Peter S. Saucier General Motors operated a plant in Moraine, Ohio, where it inherited the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE) as part of a conversion from a Frigidaire plant to a truck manufacturer in 1981. Through the automobile crisis of 2007-08, the IUE worked with GM and cooperated with every plan, well before the United Auto Workers (UAW) ever did. Still, the Moraine plant suspended operations. As GM used tax recovery money to...