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Q.  Are students who work in connection with their studies considered to be “employees” and therefore able to unionize?

A.  In a significant development for private colleges and universities, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced that it intends to propose rules that would establish a “standard for determining whether students who perform services at…

Yesterday, the National Labor Relations Board issued yet another decision that makes it easier to unionize workers deemed “joint employees” of a staffing agency and its business customer.  In its July 11, 2016 decision in a case called Miller & Anderson, Inc. and Tradesmen International and Sheet Metal Workers International Association, Local Union No. 19, AFL-CIO, the Board overturned a 2004 ruling known as Oakwood Care Center that required a business customer and a staffing agency to consent before a union election covering both jointly employed temporary workers and solely employed regular employees of the customer can occur.  Yesterday’s ruling reverses the consent requirement and takes us back to a prior ruling where consent was not required.  Now (as before 2004) a union election by regular and temporary workers together can occur simply where the Board finds that an employer’s workers and staffing agency employees working with it have an adequate “community of interest” to be part of one unit for unionization.
Continue Reading NLRB Continues Focus on Unionization of Temp Workers, Joint Employers

Our Troutman Sanders LLP Labor & Employment Group just sent out an Advisory on the NLRB’s Union Rights Poster Rule.  In a nutshell, the Rule — which requires employers to put up posters informing employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act — was supposed to go into effect on April 30, 2012.  However, a federal district court last week found the rule to be invalid.
Continue Reading One Court Rejects Union Rights Poster and Another Stops the April 30 Posting Deadline

There are plenty of HR professionals who do not deal with a unionized workforce.  Certainly some of them have an understandable tendency to gloss over matters concerning the National Labor Relations Board and similar topics.  The current NLRB (with three recent appointees of President Obama) wants you to pay attention to them, and is taking steps to make themselves and potential unionization issues relevant to every workforce.

Below is an Advisory that was issued this afternoon by Troutman Sanders’ Labor & Employment Group that shows how the NLRB intends to exert its influence onto every employer.  All HR professionals need to stay alert, pay attention, and tune in to these issues, even (and perhaps especially) if you do not have unionized employees.
Continue Reading The NLRB Wants Your Attention