Notable Board Decisions

This case discusses whether the Board should withdraw a pending unfair labor practice charge based on a settlement agreement that does not address or remedy allegations that the Employer violated Section 8(a)(1) by maintaining and enforcing its Arbitration Agreement Policy that requires employees to individually arbitrate all employment-related claims or disputes, and to waive their right to maintain collective or class actions in all forums.

This case discusses whether Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB, 535 U.S. 137 (2002), precludes the Board from ordering the conditional reinstatement of employees who, at the time they were unlawfully discharged by the Employer, lacked proper documentation to work in the United States.

This case discusses whether the Employer unlawfully threatened a union steward with suspension for using his notes during a Weingarten investigatory interview.

This case discusses whether the Board should defer to an arbitration panel’s finding that the display of informational picket signs from windows of employees’ personal vehicles parked on the Employer’s property constituted picketing in contravention of the “no-picketing” provision of the parties’ collective-bargaining agreement.

This case discusses whether the Employer violated Section 8(a)(3) when it discharged all employees who were Union members when the Employer terminated its Section 8(f) bargaining relationship with that Union.

This case discusses whether the Employer violated the Act by: (1) denying an employee the union representative of her choice at an investigatory interview; (2) not allowing the employee to confer before the interview with the union steward that the Employer chose for her; and (3) implicitly telling the steward not to speak during the interview.

This case discusses: (1) the standard for determining, in accordance with NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U.S. 490 (1979), when the Board should decline to exercise jurisdiction over faculty members at self-identified religious colleges and universities; and (2) the standard for determining, in accordance with NLRB v. Yeshiva University, 444 U.S. 672 (1980), when faculty members are managerial employees, whose rights to engage in collective bargaining are not protected by the Act.

This case discusses whether to adhere to, modify, or abandon the Board’s existing standard for deferring to arbitral decisions in cases involving alleged violations of Section 8(a)(3) and (1) of the Act.

This case discusses employee use of email for statutorily protected communications on nonworking time in the situation where the Employer has chosen to give employees access to its email system.

This case discusses whether the Employers violated Section 8(a)(1) by filing a state-court lawsuit against a former employee—who had engaged in protected union activity—alleging, among other things, that the former employee had published libelous statements on the Internet accusing the Employers of criminal conduct

This case discusses whether to reaffirm D. R. Horton, 357 NLRB 2277 (2012), in which the Board held that an employer violates the Act “when it requires employees covered by the Act, as a condition of their employment, to sign an agreement that precludes them from filing joint, class, or collective claims addressing their wages, hours, or other working conditions against the employer in any forum, arbitral or judicial.”

This case discusses whether a protected concerted Facebook conversation between two of the Employer’s employees lost the Act’s protection, and whether the Employer—which operates an afterschool teen center—violated Section 8(a)(1) by rescinding the employees’ rehire offers because of the Facebook posts.

This case discusses special remedies imposed and/or considered in the case of a recidivist Employer, including reimbursement of litigation expenses, reimbursement of union bargaining and other expenses, general publication of the notice and explanation of rights, access for union representatives, visitation, and front pay.

This case discusses the factors to be used in evaluating independent-contractor status and the analytical significance of a putative independent contractor’s actual entrepreneurial opportunity for gain or loss.

This case discusses whether the Board should overrule Planned Building Services, 347 NLRB 670 (2006), and return to a practice under which the make-whole remedy imposed on a successor employer—that has violated Section 8(a)(5) by unilaterally changing the predecessor’s terms and conditions of employment—will include restoration of the predecessor’s terms and conditions of employment until the parties bargain in good faith to agreement or impasse.

This case discusses whether the Employer—a television news channel—and a unionized subcontractor that provided audio and video technicians at two of the Employer’s new bureaus were joint employers of the unit employees at both bureaus and whether the Employer violated the Act by, among other things: (1) terminating the subcontracts with the unionized contractor; (2) failing to bargain about the decision to terminate the subcontracts and the effects of that decision; (3) implementing a hiring plan in order to avoid a successorship bargaining obligation; and (4) failing to recognize and bargain with the Union and unilaterally changing employees’ terms and conditions of employment.

This case discusses the timing of the Union’s notification to employees subject to a union-security clause of the specific amount of reduced fees and dues they would pay if they become objecting nonmembers.

This case discusses whether a decertification election should be set aside based on a statement by the Employer’s vice president that if employees chose union representation, the “Union will push you toward a strike,” and should this occur, “we will exercise our legal right to hire replacement workers,” which the Employer’s translator mistranslated with the statement that the Employer would replace the workers with “legal workers” or a “legal workforce.”

This case discusses, following remand by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 665 F.3d 196 (2011), whether the Board should deduct an employee’s interim earnings from other employment when calculating backpay in cases where the employee suffers no cessation of employment with the wrongdoing Employer and has no duty to mitigate damages by seeking interim employment.

This case discusses whether the Employer unlawfully discharged employees for participating in a Facebook comment thread about the Employer’s perceived failure to properly withhold income taxes.