Immediately prior to the vote on the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka threatened lawmakers to vote yes on the PRO Act, or “Those who would oppose, delay or derail this legislation” would lose support from Big Labor, further stating “do not ask the labor movement . . . for a dollar or door knock.”

Read more about the threat and PRO Act here.

After years of requests for better labor union oversight, the Labor Department’s union watchdog office has finally added a pair of aides with extensive experience advocating against organized labor. One of those new aides is none other than Rusty Brown, formerly of RWP Labor, who started as a union-avoidance consultant on January 6.

Bloomberg Law said of Rusty, “Brown was involved in a massive campaign to decertify a union representing 27,000 home care workers in Minnesota. He also pushed the department last year to investigate a prominent Texas worker center that has been a vocal critic of working conditions on construction projects.”

The other aide, Trey Kovacs, who began as a special assistant on January 21, is formerly a labor policy analyst at the free market think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Read more about the agency’s strides forward here.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week that the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions declined in 2019 by 0.2% from 2018 to 10.3%. In comparison, unions once stood at 20.1% in 1983, the first year for which data was made available.

Public-sector worker union rates (33.6%) eclipsed private-sector workers (6.2%) by five times, marking a historical low for private-sector unions.

Read the full Department of Labor News Release here.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has revised its regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that provide guidance on determining joint-employer status.

In January 2020, The DOL released a Joint Employer Fact Sheet defining those changes. That fact sheet may be viewed and downloaded here.

Today, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced a series of modifications to the Agency’s representation case procedures that will end the Obama-era Ambush Election Rule.

Of the changes, NLRB Chairman John F. Ring stated, “These are common-sense changes to ensure expeditious elections that are fair and efficient. The new procedures will allow workers to be informed of their rights and will simplify the representation process to the benefit of all parties.” 

The changes will be effective 120 days from the date of publication in the Federal Register, which is anticipated to be December 18, 2019. Read the full press release here.