Monday, March 15, 2010

Update of Union Activity

With all the talk about Healthcare one would think that no other legislative activity is going on in Washington. Alas, we could not be so lucky. There is still plenty of activity going on. So here is an update on various activities that are taking place.
  1. The folks at the Labor Relations Institute published this blog post with a great run down on what is happening with the Employee Free Choice Act. EFCA Update They point out that EFCA has become a shorthand statement for aggressive union tactics and warn of recess appointments of NLRB nominees Becker and Pearce. (They have to be recess appointees because they are so union biased their appointments are being blocked by the Senate.)
  2. The folks at CrediblyConnect that Unions Don't Have EFCA (Yet), But Have Won Other Victories That Make It Easier to Organize Employees . These include changes in the rules that had required Unions to reveal how and where they spent their members money. Secretary Solis made changes that now allow the Unions to not disclose their finances.
  3. @OhioLaborLawyer on Twitter pointed out that unions are not happy with some Democrats and plan to punish them at the polls. Read Unions taking on Dems who don't toe labor line that was published in The Hill.
  4. Attorney Eric B. Meyer linked to an article in S.C. Politics Today about South Carolina taking the bull by the horns and protecting the state from EFCA legislation in  Secret union ballots gets OK in Senate.
  5. Lastly, also from The Hill, we have Police, firefighter unions see chance to expand collective bargaining rights which discusses in roads, outside of EFCA, that public safety unions are making.
Regardless if you are currently dealing with unions or not you need to read this stuff. With changes at the Department of Labor, the NLRB, and in legislation  you may at some point soon be dealing with union activity. And the more preparation and information you have the better off you will be.

1 comment:

Michael said...

Mike,

Thanks for the update. Great info in this post!

Lots mroe going on, including the looming possibility of a recess appointment for Becker ina couple of weeks.

I will be at the SHRM LAw & Legislative Conference later this week, and will be bloggingand tweeting from there,

There are some great LinkedIn groups to join for more staying current on labor relations topics as well, including:

LaborUnionReport.com owned by Peter List

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2128301&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

Labor Law Professionals

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2777146&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr


And my own group,
Labor and Employee Relations

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1851166&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr