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.

The National Labor Relations Board has released their 2019-2022 strategic plan, which contains four mission-related goals. Those goals include:

1. Achieving a 20% increase in case processing time for unfair labor practice charges (5% each year over 4 years)
2. Achieving resolution of a larger number of representation cases within 100 days of filing an election petition
3. Achieving organizational excellence and productivity
4. Managing agency resources efficiently and in a manner that instills public trust

The reduction in case processing time includes regional office handling, as well as reducing the time between issuance of an Administrative Law Judge’s decision and a Board Order, and issuance of a Board Order and closure of a case.

To support this plan, the General Counsel has also issued Memorandum GC 19-02.

Read the official press release here and find the strategic plan here.

The National Right to Work Foundation has sent a letter to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) this week requesting that the Board address doctrines that make it difficult for employees to hold union decertification votes. 

At a recent American Bar Association Conference, Board Members made statements that the NLRB intends to use rulemaking to change two policies that restrict a workers’ right to vote out union officials’ unwanted representation: the “blocking charge” policy and the “voluntary recognition bar” doctrine. The letter from Foundation Vice President and Legal Director Raymond LaJeunesse requested the Board expand the scope of their rulemaking to address all non-National Labor Relations Act “bars” and “blocks” on employees’ right to hold elections to remove unwanted union representation.

“These restrictive doctrines have granted power to union bosses at the expense of the rights of the employees whose choice the National Labor Relations Act purports to protect,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Each of these Board-invented doctrines actively undermines the NLRA’s central premise by trapping workers in unions that lack the support of a majority of workers, which is why the announced rulemaking should eliminate all of these non-statutory barriers to holding decertification votes.”

Read more about the Foundation request here.

Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a new bill, called the “Stop Walmart Act,” that would force WalMart and other large employers like them to pay a minimum wage of $15 an hour to their employees if they wish to buy back their company’s stock. They would also have to provide seven days of paid sick leave and limit CEO compensation to 150 times their median employee pay.

This new act, on the heels of the Senator’s pressure campaign to force Amazon to raise their minimum wage, doesn’t take into account varying cost-of-living averages or the complexities of running a large, multi-national corporation. Many employees at Amazon are now receiving a lower overall compensation now that Amazon has raised their minimum wage to $15 an hour, cutting bonus structures to do so.

It’s also worth noting that Sen. Sanders has not called for unions to follow these higher pay minimums. “Working America,” for instance, an arm of the AFL-CIO, recently paid $12.25 an hour for job advocating a national $15/hr. minimum wage.

Read more about the bill here.