The Employment Brief

For the first time in many years, the NLRB will have a full five-member complement.  In order to achieve this, President Obama withdrew the nomination of two controversial, anti-employer recess-appointed members, Robert F. Griffin and Sharon Block.  In their place, he nominated two replacements with similar philosophies, who will be confirmed by the Senate if they haven’t been already. Robert Griffin has now been nominated by the president to be...

I now have a new favorite religious discrimination case.  It was just reported that a federal appeals court has ruled that an employee who took several weeks of unauthorized leave to bury his father in Nigeria is entitled to a trial on his religious discrimination claim.  He had made two requests for 4 to 5 weeks of unpaid leave because the funeral ceremony involved sacrificing goats in the third week, giving his mother a haircut and anointing her...

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece by Bill Nojay, a New York Assemblyman who last year was the chief operating officer of the Detroit Department of Transportation.  As a labor and employment lawyer who “dabbles” in OSHA, I found the piece depressingly familiar.  Nojay, who stated that he was “a manager with virtually no authority over personnel,” talked about how union and civil service rules made it impossible to discipline...