A group of businesses challenging the power of the president to make recess appointments suffered a legal setback Friday.
In recent days, the South Carolina Republican primary has been referred to as the Super Bowl, ground zero and even "Armageddon." This hyperbole has been matched by the outrageous amount of money being spent here on political TV advertising: $11.3 million.
The White House announced Wednesday that President Obama plans to appoint three new members to the National Labor Relations Board, continuing his end-run around the Congressional approval process. The White House said in a statement that Obama has tapped Sharon Block, Terence Flynn and Richard Griffin to fill seats on the board via recess appointments. The NLRB, which is supposed to be governed by a five-member board, is down to three active members because Senate Republicans have opposed Obama's nominees. And one member, Craig Becker, will see his term end at the conclusion of the current session of Congress. That's a problem, because the NLRB requires a three-member quorum to do anything, like set rules or consider a complaint. President Obama has made four nominations in the last two years, none of whom have come up for a confirmation vote in the Senate. Obama originally nominated Flynn last January, and named Block and Griffin in December. Wednesday's
The National Labor Relations Board -- a top target of Republicans and business critics of the Obama administration -- could be sidelined early next year.
The National Labor Relations Board on Friday dropped its politically charged unfair labor practice case against Boeing over the aircraft maker's plan to move 787 Dreamliner production to a new nonunion plant in South Carolina.
Frustrated by an inability to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with owners, some NBA players have sought the advice of an antitrust attorney on the possibility of decertifying the National Basketball Players' Association. Such a maneuver would likely be followed by the filing of a class action antitrust lawsuit against the league and it would make the cancellation of the 2011-12 NBA more probable.
When officials from the NBA and the National Basketball Players' Association met in New York on Wednesday for just the second time since the lockout began on July 1, the topic that might eventually play such a significant part in their negotiations probably never came up -- even if a number of prominent agents wish it would have.
Let the decertification talk commence.
A labor dispute is raging at the heart of a congressional spat over Federal Aviation Administration funding. The issue has left 4,000 federal workers sitting at home unpaid and tens of thousands of construction workers without work.
Dueling lockouts. Call me when they're over.
How many ways are there to sidestep Congress' refusal to make it easier for unions to organize? Let us count them. No, better than that, let's add yet another example -- this one involving Delta Airlines -- to the growing pile of end-runs around Congress to reward a constituency this White House badly needs at its side in next year's presidential election.
The National Labor Relations Board unveiled new rule changes Tuesday that could speed up votes on whether or not employees at a company want to belong to a union.
A lot of politicians are weighing in with demands before they'll support raising the debt ceiling. Most of their conditions are related to debt, such as put in place a debt reduction plan or cut spending.
The NBA players' union has made the first move in what will likely be a long legal chess match played out in mediation rooms and courthouses. Earlier today, the union filed an unfair labor practices charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), asserting that the NBA refuses to bargain in good faith. The union intends to prove that the league has made a series of demands -- such as reductions in guaranteed player contracts and a hard salary cap -- which it knows the players will reject.
There's a new battle brewing between big business and labor.
Now that the NFL Players Association has decided to decertify, here's a road map of what might happen next.
A Connecticut ambulance service that fired an employee for posting negative Facebook comments about her boss has settled with its former worker, resolving a case that was poised to test new legal ground in labor law.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Wednesday it was beefing up its arsenal in the face of what it called a "regulatory tsunami of unprecedented force" from the Obama administration.
The recent news item about a Connecticut worker fired for Facebook postings that annoyed her employer, like other accounts of employees sacked for private speech, was bound to draw a lot of attention. Americans hold First Amendment rights to free speech as a kind of sacrosanct birthright, and for many of us the idea that you can lose your job for expressing private thoughts away from work offends the core principle of freedom of expression.
Companies and employees navigate the ethical and legal framework of talking about work on social networking sites.
In what could prove to be a precedent-setting case, the National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint against a Connecticut company for firing an employee after she posted critical, derogatory comments about her supervisor on Facebook.
More than 60 union workers for the company that provides bus service in Phoenix were locked out of their jobs Monday as contract negotiations failed to reach an agreement.
The Senate cleared dozens of backlogged Obama administration nominations Tuesday, including two appointments for the National Labor Relations Board that will allow it to operate with full membership for the first time in two and a half years.
One of President Obama's Saturday recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board quickly triggered intense opposition from business groups and Republicans, who called the appointee a radical who represents a White House gift to labor unions.
On Wednesday, in United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the federal government's seizure of computer files which implicated 104 major league players as steroids users violated those players' Forth Amendment rights. The decision sets the table for a possible review by the United States Supreme Court and it may also prove to be a game-changer as to whether baseball fans ever learn the identities of all 104 names.
During the past 20 years, Bob Cook's employees have twice considered forming a union. Cook, who owns Cook Paper Recycling in Kansas City, Mo., says union organizers invited his workers to a tavern both times. Over free beers, the employees enthusiastically signed union cards, but when it came time for the secret ballot - a second step that employers can insist on - they voted the idea down.
Barack Obama comes to Washington carrying a load of hopes and dreams, none more ardent than organized labor's. Item No. 1 on the AFL-CIO's legislative agenda: the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), also known as the card-check bill. Simply put, EFCA would streamline the process by which employees could decide to join a union. In most cases, a simple majority of signed cards would suffice; no need for a full-blown election sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board.
"All these yeses - sounds like my bedroom," a union guy whispers in my ear. Yuk-yuk. The setting is a crowded hotel meeting room at the Tropicana Casino & Resort in Atlantic City. It's past midnight on the last Saturday in August. I'm here with dozens of increasingly confident union supporters and several dour company officials as a blue-suited woman from the National Labor Relations Board unfolds ballots one by one and counts the votes: "Yes. Yes. Yes."
The House is expected to pass a piece of legislation Thursday that seeks to significantly rebalance the playing field for unions and employers and could possibly reverse decades of declining membership among private industries.
Another bee-you-ti-ful example of the right-wing media getting it all wrong. Here they are having the nerve to mutter in public about "activist judges" because Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has pointed out that spying without a warrant is illegal in this country -- so warrantless telephone tapping is illegal in this country.
A man who had been holding as many as nine people hostage Thursday on the 18th floor of a building in downtown Phoenix surrendered peacefully, police said.
Employees at the Loveland, Colo., Wal-Mart Tire & Lube Express voted against unionizing Friday, according to a statement by the world's largest retailer.
Employees at a Colorado Wal-Mart tire and auto maintenance shop have been granted approval to hold a union election that could create the first ever organized labor group at the country's biggest retailer.
Amid the tech carnage, there's one group celebrating: organized labor. The rout has given unions an opportunity to rally a part of the work force that was previously out of reach.
OCCUPATIONS: Field examiner for the National Labor Relations Board and county hospital worker
Fred Nahas is not your typical union activist. The 51-year-old doctor is a vascular surgeon in Somer's Point, N.J., and earns a comfortable six-figure income. His only experience with a picket line...
Can anything be done to reverse the long slide of America's unions? The answer frequently given around here is ''no, fortunately,'' but the Clintonites obviously mean to try. The emerging official ...
By standards commonly invoked in the past, American labor relations would seem ; to be remarkably serene. Strike activity is at a post-World War II low: In the latest 12-month period, only about 1/...
A big problem for professional redbaiters like the present writer is the acknowledged paucity of present Communists, especially here in the U.S.A. Also not helping matters is the widely held view t...
Management-worker teams, like those used by Corning, Du Pont, and General Mills to improve quality and productivity, could soon get a shot in the arm -- or a blow to the head -- via a test case inv...
The long, slow disintegration of American unionism may be coming to an end. In the years ahead, we could be looking at quite rapid disintegration. And all because of gun control. Can one make this ...
The scene depicted in the drawing on this page refers to a wisecrack believed to have originated in embittered publishing circles. The scene is not reality- based. It is not really true that certai...
Easily the strangest federal agency in our country's capital these days is the National Mediation Board. Nobody can explain this animal to us. For openers, nobody can make clear how it has managed ...
What means the news from Harvard? We allude of course to the titanic struggle over union representation for the university's mostly female technical and clerical workers. Prexy Derek Bok was widely...
How is your company's relationship with Uncle Sam? Not so hot? You're hardly the only one with a complaint -- and the aggregate of such dissatisfaction may form a significant problem for America. T...
''Consumers should say, 'I'm addicted to this damn thing and I'm better off without it.' '' - FRANK ANNUNZIO, 70, Congressman from Illinois, urging consumers to cut up and mail back their credit ca...
''I will say never -- my advice to the public is never, never, never -- under any circumstances, engage the services of a lawyer who advertises.'' -WARREN E. BURGER, 78, Chief Justice of the U.S. S...
Organized labor has had trouble in court recently. The Supreme Court ruled in a 5 to 4 vote that unions cannot penalize workers who resign during a strike. Some unions, trying to tighten ranks, had...
