You would think that an employee who purposely defecates on the workplace floor in an act of revenge against his boss and then brags about it is worthy of termination. And you'd be correct 100 percent of the time … unless that employee is a member of a labor union. An arbitration board cited the employee's lengthy, faithful service record to the company and other mitigating circumstances in reinstating him.
Friday, February 19, 2021
The number one reason not to have a labor union
You would think that an employee who purposely defecates on the workplace floor in an act of revenge against his boss and then brags about it is worthy of termination. And you'd be correct 100 percent of the time … unless that employee is a member of a labor union. An arbitration board cited the employee's lengthy, faithful service record to the company and other mitigating circumstances in reinstating him.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Friday, January 8, 2021
When you discover that you employ a seditious rebel #TraitorsGettingFired
Elizabeth wasn’t ready for the revolution to be televisedđ pic.twitter.com/LibeNAuE6h
— xy467chr (@xy467chr) January 6, 2021
Why is Jake Angeli walking free? If he can be named in this article, and he was part of the insurrectionist movement yesterday, he committed a crime by invading the Capitol and he should be arrested. https://t.co/5hUbek57nc
— Dr. HawaiiDelilah™ (@HawaiiDelilah) January 7, 2021
This is Paul Davis. Paul is a lawyer. He’s also associate general counsel & director of human resources at Goosehead Insurance. Today he stormed the capitol building in an attempt to stage a coup against the US government and documented it (!) on Instagram. @followgoosehead pic.twitter.com/eTkoK92ujL
— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) January 7, 2021
NEW: A Maryland company has terminated one of its employees after he was apparently captured in a picture during the mob riot in the Capitol yesterday. @wbaltv11 pic.twitter.com/flxRhdmP3P
— Tre Ward (@TreWardWBAL) January 7, 2021
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Thursday, August 20, 2020
BLM vs. MAGA at work
Depending on your political perspective, Goodyear is either being praised or criticized after this slide from diversity training at its Topeka, Kansas, plant went viral.
BLM or LGBT messages on clothing okay; MAGA, Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, or other political symbols not okay.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Meet the new boss, same as the old, old boss—NLRB issues long-awaited final rule on “joint employment”
Yesterday, the NLRB announced its long-awaited final rule governing joint-employer status under the National Labor Relations Act.
The rule clarifies that for an employer to qualify as a “joint employer” it must “possess and exercise such substantial direct and immediate control over one or more essential terms and conditions of employment of another employer’s employees.”
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Monday, February 10, 2020
Amazon’s crackdown on employee climate-change protesters is a teachable moment on employee speech rights
Earlier this year, Amazon threatened to fire two employees who spoke out against the company’s stance on climate change. In addition, the company also issued a new employee communications policy.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Thursday, February 6, 2020
Labor issues when you acquire a company with a union
Spotify recently announced that it is acquiring The Ringer, one of the most prolific and popular podcasting networks. Spotify also indicated that it intends to hire all of The Ringers’ 90 employees, most of whom work on theringer.com, which covers sports and culture and which Spotify indicates it will keep up and running.
Last summer, 66 of those 90 employees signed union-authorization cards stating their support for the Writers Guild of America East to represent them as their collective bargaining representative. Shortly thereafter, The Ringer management voluntarily recognized the Guild as the union representative for its employees.
What does this mean for Spotify? Is it acquiring a labor union as part of its purchase of The Ringer? Like most legal questions, the answer depends on a number of factors.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Federal appeals court orders NLRB to determine whether workplace harassment laws trump the National Labor Relations Act
You might recall Constellium Rolled Products Ravenswood, a 2018 NLRB case in which the Board held that offensive graffiti scrawled on an employee’s timesheet (“whore board”) constituted a lawful exercise of protected concerted activity.
Recently, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the NLRB shirked its responsibility by not considering addressing any alleged conflict between its interpretation of the NLRA and the Company’s obligations under state and federal equal employment opportunity laws to maintain a harassment-free workplace.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Thursday, December 19, 2019
NLRB rolls back 2 key Obama era anti-management decisions
This week, the National Labor Relations Board decided two cases that rolled back key Obama era anti-management NLRB decisions.
- Apogee Retail LLC d/b/a Unique Thrift Store, which overturned Banner Estrella Medical Center and held that work rules requiring confidentiality during the course of workplace investigations are presumptively lawful.
- Caesars Entertainment d/b/a/ Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino, which overturned Purple Communications and held that an employer can lawfully restrict employee use of its email system as long as it does so on a nondiscriminatory basis.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Wednesday, December 11, 2019
The 4 things you cannot do to pro-union employees (hint: number 1 is fire them)
Four former Google employees claim that their ex-employer fired them Thanksgiving week in retaliation for their efforts to organize a labor union. According to CNBC, the NLRB is now investigating the firings. For its part, Google denies that anti-union animus played any roll in the firings.
We dismissed four individuals who were engaged in intentional and often repeated violations of our longstanding data security policies, including systematically accessing and disseminating other employees’ materials and work. No one has been dismissed for raising concerns or debating the company’s activities.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Girl Scouts good / union organizers bad
What if, however, you allow your employee’s daughter’s Girl Scout troop to set up a table outside and sell cookies? Have you just opened yourself to an argument that allowing cookie sales unlawfully discriminates against the banned union organizers?
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Monday, September 9, 2019
NLRB asks for help to overturn some really $%#^ bad decisions
“Bob is such a NASTY MOTHER FUCKER don’t know how to talk to people!!!!!! Fuck his mother and his entire fucking family!!!! What a LOSER!!!!”
“Hey, did you bring enough KFC for everyone?” “Go back to Africa, you bunch of fucking losers.” “Hey anybody smell that? I smell fried chicken and watermelon.”
You’d think that if any of your employees lobbed any of these bombs at a supervisor or coworker, you’d have no legal issue if you fired them. And you’d be right … usually.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Wednesday, August 14, 2019
You are DUMB if you threaten to fire employees who support labor unions, and even DUMBER if you tweet about it #barstool
Meet Dave Portnoy. He’s the editor of Barstool Sports, a website that I can only describe as having missed the memo entirely on #MeToo. Mr. Portnoy describes himself as: “El Presidente/3 time Bee Sting survivor. Heart attack survivor. 2019 #dipoff champion. Shot 4 under at Shinnecock. Worshipped like a 3rd world dictator.”
#yuck
Portnoy also holds some strong opinions, including about labor unions.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Labor and employment lessons from the world’s most combative stripper
Different type of stripper |
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Tuesday, July 9, 2019
NLRB offers significant and important guidance on its new(ish) employee handbook rules
It’s been just over 18 months since the NLRB decided Boeing Co., perhaps its most significant decision in decades. It rewrote more than a decade of precedent by overturning its Lutheran Heritage standard regarding when facially neutral employment policies violate the rights of employees to engage in concerted activity protected by section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Bathroom conversations aren't private conversations
Michael Woods, a mortgage banker at Quicken Loans, was having a bad day at work. A customer Woods had helped four years ago had been trying to get in touch with a Client Specialist; the company routed the call to Woods because of their prior relationship. He aired his grievance to a co-worker, Austin Laff, while they were in the bathroom together. "The client should get in touch with a fucking Client Care Specialist and quit wasting my fucking time."
Jorge Mendez, a supervisor, overheard this conversation from a stall. He responded with an all-employee email reminding everyone of proper conduct in public areas. "Never, EVER, should we be swearing in the bathroom especially about clients."
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Monday, March 11, 2019
What a lawful "civility" policy looks like under the NLRB's Boeing test
Consider and compare the following workplace civility policies:
Commitment to My Co-Workers
- I will accept responsibility for establishing and maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships with you and every member of this team.
- I will talk to your promptly if I am having a problem with you. The only time I will discuss it with another person is when I need advice or help in deciding how to communicate with you appropriately.
- I will not complain about another team member and ask you not to as well. If I hear you doing so, I will ask you to talk to that person.
- I will be committed to finding solutions to problems rather than complaining about them or blaming someone for them, and ask you to do the same.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Thursday, March 7, 2019
As seen on Reddit: Salary discussion bans are a BIG legal no-no
AriesAviator posted the following question in the LegalAdvice subreddit:
Boss just threatened to fire me and another co-worker because we were discussing a raise we both got- what should I do?
We both got pulled into a group chat over the app our work uses, and the first message reads as follows;
Hey I don't want to here about your raises with the other crew members we talked about this before, other places have strict rules either termination or reversal of the raise this is not okay, Don't turn something we tried to do nice for you too into a pain for us.
Which, uh, what the fuck?
I'm pretty fucking sure everything in there is MASSIVELY illegal.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Thursday, February 28, 2019
The legalities of employee mass walkouts vs. the practicalities of avoiding them in the first place
Three central Ohio Sonic restaurants are without employees after their entire staffs walked off the job in protest against new management and its policies.
According to The Scioto Post, employees left a handwritten note on the door, reading in part, "Due to terrible management the whole store has quit. The company has been sold to people that don't give a f*uck about anyone but themselves."
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Monday, January 28, 2019
NLRB flip-flops on key independent contractor test
The distinction between employees and independent contractors is one that still confounds employers. It is a vitally important distinction, because key employment laws, such as anti-discrimination laws, wage and hour laws, and labor laws do not apply to independent contractors.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Union membership is on the rise in Ohio; is your business ready?
Union membership numbers for 2018 are out, and while most employers should be encouraged, Ohio employers might think otherwise.
In Ohio, the percentage of workers belonging to unions is at 12.6 percent, up 0.1 percent from 2017. Nationally, union membership sits at 10.5 percent, down ever so slightly from 2017. In other words, Ohio’s union representation is both greater than, and growing faster than, the national average.
For more information, contact Jon at (440) 695-8044 or JHyman@Wickenslaw.com.
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