This morning the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited opinion in Janus v. AFCSME , holding that requiring public sector employees to pay fair share fees to unions violates the First Amendment. As we discussed in our prior posts , a fair share fee (sometimes called an agency fee) is a fee that non-union members must pay to the union to cover the expenses incurred by the union while representing bargaining unit employees. Until this morning,…

We have been talking about the National Labor Relations Board’s assault on Employee Handbooks, policies and rules for years now.  Frankly, precious few of these posts have contained good news for employers.  See for yourself! Then, yesterday, in a 3-2 vote (split along party lines) a Republican majority overturned the NLRB’s 2004 Lutheran Heritage standard governing facially-neutral workplace rules, policies and handbooks.  Under the old standard, the Board could find that an employer violated the…

In City of Allentown, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered the City to implement an interest arbitration award which contained (among modifications to wages, sick leave, vacation, pension and overtime) a minimum staffing requirement of 25 firefighters per shift. As every public sector employer and practitioner knows, a municipality has no obligation to bargain with a union representing police officers or firefighters over inherent managerial policy (overall budget, standards of service, organizational structure, selection and…