Tag Archives: nlrb

The Push to Unionize College Football Players Just Suffered a Huge Blow

by LinwoodJernigan Posted on August 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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The National Labor Relations Board on Monday dismissed a bid from Northwestern University football players to form the first-ever college athletes’ union, overturning an earlier regional board ruling and ending a year-and-a-half-long battle that included several union-busting efforts by the school and the team’s coaches to persuade athletes to vote against unionization.

From the Chicago Tribune:

In a unanimous decision, the five-member board declined to “assert” jurisdiction over the case because doing so would not promote uniformity and labor stability in college football and could potentially upset the competitive balance between college teams, according to an NLRB official.

The board, the official said, analyzed the nature, composition and structure of college football and concluded that Northwestern football players would be attempting to bargain with a single employer over policies that apply league-wide.

The decision marks a significant blow for Northwestern athletes, who won a regional board decision in March 2014 that determined they were university employees and could therefore seek union representation. However, it is unclear what effect the latest ruling will have on potential future unionization attempts at other schools; the board’s decision applies strictly to Northwestern’s case, and it declined to decide whether the athletes were employees under federal law, leaving open the possibility for athletes to unionize elsewhere.

The College Athletes Players Association, a collection of former athletes spearheading the bid, could appeal the ruling in federal court, but, according to the Tribune, that appears unlikely. Former Northwestern star quarterback Kain Colter, who had pushed the athletes’ union efforts, expressed disappointment over Monday’s ruling on Twitter, noting that the jury was still out as to whether college athletes are still employees.

CAPA president Ramogi Kuma called Monday’s ruling a “loss in time” in a statement, in that it delayed “the leverage the players need to protect themselves.” But, he said, it didn’t stop other athletes from pursuing unionization. “The fight for college athletes’ rights,” he told the Tribune, “will continue.”

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The Push to Unionize College Football Players Just Suffered a Huge Blow

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Fast-Food Workers Just Took McDonald’s Down a Notch

by Edwardo01P Posted on July 30, 2014

Mother Jones

On Tuesday evening, the federal government dealt a huge blow to McDonald’s, which has for over a year and a half been the target of worker protests and lawsuits over its low wages and questionable labor practices.

McDonald’s has long maintained that as a parent company, it cannot be held liable for the decisions individual franchises make about pay and working conditions. On Tuesday, the general counsel at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that this is nonsense, saying that the $5.6 billion company is indeed responsible for employment practices at its local franchises. That means that the company is no longer shielded from dozes of charges pending at regional NLRB offices around the country alleging illegal employment practices.

“McDonald’s can try to hide behind its franchisees, but today’s determination by the NLRB shows there’s no two ways about it,” Micah Wissinger, an attorney who brought a case on behalf of New York City McDonald’s workers said in a statement Tuesday. “The Golden Arches is an employer, plain and simple.”

The Fast-Food Workers Committee along with the Service Employees International Union has filed numerous complaints against the company with the NLRB since November 2012. Most recently, workers filed seven class action lawsuits against McDonald’s corporate and its franchises in three states alleging wage theft. The NLRB consolidated all these complaints into the case it decided on Tuesday, which focused on whether McDonald’s corporate can be considered as a “joint employer” along with the owner of the franchise.

Since the fall of 2012, fast-food workers at McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC franchises around the country have been striking to demand a $15 minimum wage and the right to form a union without retaliation. The strikes recently went global. Organizers say Tuesday’s ruling will lend workers new momentum in their ongoing battle against the fast-food mega-chain.

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Fast-Food Workers Just Took McDonald’s Down a Notch

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Presidential Appointments Were Already a Total Nightmare. Now They Just Got Worse.

by FrankieReeder Posted on June 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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Barack Obama had better hope nobody resigns from his administration during the final two years of his presidency. Thanks to a new Supreme Court ruling released Thursday, it’s going to be a lot harder for Obama, and every other future president, to staff the executive branch.

In a unanimous decision penned by Justice Stephen Breyer, the court greatly reduced the president’s ability to make recess appointments with its decision in Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board. Breyer’s opinion rejected a lower court’s ruling that would have essentially nullified the president’s ability to appoint nominees to temporary jobs in the executive branch when Congress is out of town. But Breyer and his fellow eight justices said that the president can’t ignore Congress when it claims to still be at work, even if those sessions are just show meetings to obstruct the president. While upholding the concept of recess appointments, the new ruling will in essence prevent the president from using recess appointments anytime the opposition party controls one side of Congress. The Senate can’t enter a recess without the consent of the House, and they’re unlikely to ever get permission to officially leave town if the House majority is opposed to the president. The court’s decision also leaves countless labor dispute decisions in doubt.

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Presidential Appointments Were Already a Total Nightmare. Now They Just Got Worse.

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Democrats Finally Getting Ready to Kill the Filibuster

by Elva Diller Posted on November 20, 2013

Mother Jones

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Republicans have now made clear that they’re willing to filibuster all of President Obama’s nominees to the DC circuit court. This is not because they have any specific objections to them, but simply because they want to preserve the court’s conservative majority even though they lost the election. Greg Sargent reports that this is such a sweeping position that Harry Reid no longer thinks there’s any chance of brokering a compromise on the matter. The only option left, according to a senior leadership aide, is to go nuclear and do away with the filibuster entirely:

“Reid has become personally invested in the idea that Dems have no choice other than to change the rules if the Senate is going to remain a viable and functioning institution,” the aide says….Asked if Reid would drop the threat to go nuclear if Republicans green-lighted one or two of Obama’s judicial nominations, the aide said: “I don’t think that’s going to fly.”

Reid has concluded Senate Republicans have no plausible way of retreating from the position they’ve adopted in this latest Senate rules standoff, the aide says. Republicans have argued that in pushing nominations, Obama is “packing” the court, and have insisted that Obama is trying to tilt the court’s ideological balance in a Democratic direction — which is to say that the Republican objection isn’t to the nominees Obama has chosen, but to the fact that he’s trying to nominate anyone at all.

Reid believes that, having defined their position this way, Republicans have no plausible route out of the standoff other than total capitulation on the core principle they have articulated, which would be a “pretty dramatic reversal,” the aide continues.

But does Reid have the votes? The New York Times reports that Republican obstruction has finally gotten so outrageous that even previously cautious Democrats are now supporting Reid’s position:

Mr. Reid, of Nevada, has picked up crucial support from some of his more reluctant members recently. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the longest-serving member of the Senate today, who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has endorsed putting limits on the filibuster despite his history of being protective of Senate institutions. The two senators from California, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, said separately on Tuesday that they were leaning toward a rules change.

….The stakes seem higher this time for many Democrats. Many of them strongly believe that if Mr. Obama is not able to appoint any judges to the court — Republicans have rejected four of the five nominees he has submitted — it will retain its conservative bent for decades. It is a crucially important court for any White House because it often decides cases that relate to administration or federal agency policies.

At various points over the past year, Republicans have refused to confirm any nominees to the NLRB so that it would lose its quorum and be unable to pass new rules; they have refused to confirm any chairman of the CFPB in order to prevent it from functioning at all; they have threatened to destroy America’s credit unless Obamacare was defunded; and now they’re refusing to confirm any nominees to the DC circuit court in order to preserve its conservative tilt. Reid eventually managed to cut deals on the NLRB, the CFPB, and Obamacare, but as Feinstein says, “We left with a very good feeling there would be a new day. Well, the new day lasted maybe for a week.”

Add all this up—the NLRB, the CFPB, the debt ceiling extortion, and the DC court filibusters—and it’s now clear that Republicans have no intention of allowing Obama to govern normally. Instead, they have adopted a routine strategy of trying to nullify legislation they don’t like via procedural abuse. As Sargent puts it:

The GOP position is not grounded in an objection to Obama’s nominees or to the function of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals; it’s grounded in the argument that Obama should not have the power to make these appointments to the court at all. As Jonathan Chait argues, Republicans may not have even thought through the full implications of the position they’ve adopted. But Dems have, and taking it to its logical conclusion, they believe Republicans have presented them with a simple choice: Either they change the rules, or they accept those limits on Obama’s power. And that really leaves only one option.

Yep.

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Democrats Finally Getting Ready to Kill the Filibuster

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