On October 9, 2012, the NLRB’s Acting General Counsel, Lafe Solomon, announced a further restructuring of the NLRB’s field offices. Earlier, he announced changes affecting the St. Louis and Winston-Salem offices which were consolidated into the Kansas City Region and Atlanta Regions respectively, along with some ...
On September 28, 2012, the National Labor Relations Board issued its first decision in one of the social media cases which have garnered so much attention in the last year and a half. The case is Karl Knauz Motors, Inc., d/b/a Knauz BMW, 358 NLRB No. 164. This was the case of a BMW salesman named Becker who was fired after ...
On September 26, 2012, U.S. Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, announced that he and 41 other Senators had filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Noel Canning v. NLRB, Nos. 12-1115, 12-1153, challenging the constitutionality of the recess appointments made on January 4 ...
By Edwin S. Hopson
On September 14, 2012, the President's Office of Management and Budget released a report on what the estimated impact of sequestration pursuant to Sequestration Transparency Act, as mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011, would be on January 2, 2013, should the Congress not agree upon a budget or otherwise intervene prior ...
By Edwin S. Hopson
On September 5, 2012, U.S. District Court Judge Frederick J. Martone ruled that an Arizona state constitutional amendment addressing how employees choose a union was not on its face preempted by the National Labor Relations Act. The NLRB had filed suit in federal court in Phoenix, Arizona in 2011, challenging the Arizona ...
By Edwin S. Hopson
On August 22, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Kroll v. West Lake Ambulance Authority, ___ F.3d ___, Case No. 10-2348, held that requiring an employee to undergo psychological counseling may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The ADA states:
"A covered entity shall not require a medical ...
By Edwin S. Hopson
On August 1, 2012, we reported that in Chamber of Commerce of the United States, et al. v. National Labor Relations Board, Civil No. 11-2262, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia had enjoined on May 14, 2012, the NLRB’s implementation of its new regulations relating to speeding up representation elections. The ...
By Edwin S. Hopson
On July 30, 2012, an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor issued an advisory and guidance to federal contractors concerning the applicability of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act) to possible layoffs occasioned by federal government sequestration on January 2, 2013, under the ...
By Edwin S. Hopson
In Chamber of Commerce of the United States, et al. v. National Labor Relations Board, Civil No. 11-2262, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia had enjoined on May 14, 2012, the NLRB’s implementation of its new regulations relating to representation elections based upon a lack of quorum. Thereafter, the NLRB filed ...
By Edwin S. Hopson
In Banner Health System d/b/a Banner Estrella Medical Center, 358 NLRB No. 93 (2012), decided July 30, 2012, the NLRB in a 2-1 decision (Members Griffin and Block in the majority, and Member Hayes dissenting), held that an employer representative who was conducting a workplace investigation violated employee Section 7 rights ...