In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act amended the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to allow states to enact right-to-work statutes. 28 states have since adopted those laws (state-wide laws are pictured above in green; blue holds local right-to-work laws), and union membership has been declining since. In the 1950s, 35 percent of the workforce held union memberships. That figure declined to 10.7 in 2017. Now the unions want to fight back by reversing decades of reform.

In 2018, two bills were introduced in Congress to roll back right-to-work laws: the Workplace Democracy Act and the Workers’ Freedom to Negotiate Act. The Workplace Democracy Act attempts to ban right-to-work laws, and the Workers’ Freedom to Negotiate Act would require nonunion employees to pay agency fees in right-to-work states.

Both bills are expected to be reintroduced in the new session of Congress. Read more about them here.

Mark Gaston Pearce, who had previously served as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) chair, has withdrawn his name from consideration for a renewed term on the Board. The pro-union Democrat served two terms under the Obama administration, and although President Trump nominated him in August to serve an additional term, the nomination expired at the end of 2018 when the Senate failed to vote on it.

“While I urge that the board return to five members so that it can continue to function with the appropriate quorum,” Pearce said, “I feel it’s best that I remove myself from the center of a political tug of war that has spanned five months.” Republicans and business advocates are pushing to keep the seat open, citing Republican vacancies during the Obama era as a precedent for maintaining a 3-1 Republican majority.

Read more about his decision here.

On January 31, the National Mediation Board (NMB) published a proposed rule and request for comments to amend its regulations to provide for decertification of labor unions. This move intends to make the decertification process for unions as simple as certification.

At present, the NMB administers the Railway Labor Act and certifies unions upon request to represent crafts and classes of employees performing the same jobs on a system-wide basis. If employees wish to end union representation, they must utilize a straw man procedure, choosing a new representative who will replace the current one (when, in reality, the person will not serve as a representative). Once 50 percent of the workforce signs authorization cards, a vote is administered. The vote gives employees four options: current representation; the straw man; a write-in option; and no representative. Decertification can only happen if the majority of people vote for “no representative” or the straw man, who then declines to serve as a representative.

The NMB’s rule change proposes that a decertification vote would take place after authorization cards are submitted for 50 percent of the employees eligible to vote in the craft or class, and that vote would eliminate the straw man option. If the majority of workers vote to remove representation, “the NMB will not accept any future applications from any organization or individual seeking to represent the craft or class for a two-year period from the date of the decertification.”

Read more about the proposed rule change here.

On January 17, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Chairman John F. Ring responded to the January 8 letter from Chairman Bobby Scott (Education and Labor Committee) and Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (House Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee) that urged the Board to withdraw its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the joint-employer standard. Chairman Ring’s five-page letter in response defending his position can be found here.

In addition, Chairman Ring noted that “in light of the unique circumstances presented by the recent D.C. Circuit Browning-Ferris decision . . . the Board recognized the appropriateness of extending the comment period in order for the issues raised in that decision to be addressed in comments submitted to the board.” The Board has extended the deadline for comments from January 14 to January 28, 2019.

Find the official NLRB release here.

As autonomous driving is becoming a reality, expected to become the norm on our roads, the availability of self-driving trucks leaves open questions about what will happen to employees and their unions.

Using a hypothetical transportation company, Littler Publications attempts to answer these questions with a full legal analysis of the possible future we may face.

Read the full article here.