By Joshua Henderson & Timothy M. Hoppe Seyfarth Synopsis: AB 1654 provides a PAGA exemption for certain employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement. While AB 1654 is limited to the construction industry, its underlying rationale applies much more broadly, and may augur further thoughtful restrictions on PAGA’s broad scope. California’s Private Attorneys General Act, imposing draconian penalties for even relatively trivial Labor Code violations, remains the bane of California employers. Efforts to restrict PAGA’s scope…

By:  Alison C. Loomis Seyfarth Synopsis:  Employers may challenge whether unions still have majority support between the date that agreement on a collective bargaining agreement was reached and the date that the agreement becomes effective. The Board’s contract-bar doctrine limits the circumstances under which an election petition is processed if the petition is filed during the term of a collective bargaining agreement.  In other words, employers (or rival unions) are “barred” from filing an election…

  By: Tiffany Tran, Esq. Seyfarth Synopsis: In another signal that the Board may overturn the Obama Board’s decision in Purple Communications allowing employees to use their employer’s email systems to communicate about wages, hours, working conditions and union issues, the Board recently published a letter reiterating its decision to reconsider Purple Communications and invited comment from the public on the standard the Board should apply in these cases. Under Purple Communications, 361 NLRB 1050…

By: Christopher W. Kelleher and John T. Ayers-Mann Seyfarth Synopsis: Though the NLRA provides robust protections for striking employees, the Board’s decision in Consolidated Communications demonstrates some of the limits of those protections. On October 2, 2018, the NLRB held that inherently dangerous acts calculated to intimidate do not fall within the broad scope of the NLRA’s protections. The National Labor Relations Board, in a recent decision, has provided further guidance on the limits of…

By: Samuel Sverdlov and Howard Wexler Seyfarth Synopsis: The E-Verify program has become a controversial topic in the political arena and throughout workplaces nationwide.  Last month, the NLRB held, amongst other things, that an employer violated the NLRA by unilaterally enrolling in the E-Verify program without first bargaining with the union. Immigration law has long been at the forefront of political discourse in the United States.  One question that employers continue to grapple with is…

By Monica Rodriguez and Jeffrey A. Berman Seyfarth Synopsis: The National Labor Relations Board recently commenced an examination of the continued validity of a number of Obama Board actions. These include joint employer status, employee use of company email systems, and the “quickie election rules.” This blog provides an overview of the Board’s recent activities. Just like Vladimir  and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, employers, unions, and employees are waiting for the National Labor Relations…

BY:  Joshua L. Ditelberg and Stuart Newman Seyfarth Synopsis: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) announced that it will publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on September 14, 2018 in the Federal Register regarding its standard for assessing whether a joint-employer relationship exists. Under the NLRB’s joint-employer doctrine, the Board analyzes whether two separate business entities (e.g., service provider and client, franchisor and franchisee) share sufficient control over key employment terms such that…