Posted on 08/27/2015 12:04:28 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The Obama administration is redefining what it means to be an employer.
The National Labor Relations Board on Thursday handed down one of the biggest labor decisions of the Obama administration, ruling that a company is equally responsible for labor violations committed by its contractor.
At issue is whether garbage company Browning-Ferris is responsible for the treatment of its contractor’s employees. The Houston-based waste-disposal company hired Leadpoint Business Services to staff a recycling facility in California. The labor board determined Browning-Ferris should be considered a joint employer with the Phoenix-based staffing agency. As a result, the company could be pulled into collective bargaining negotiations with those employees and held liable for any labor violations committed against them.
This is a sharp departure from previous labor laws that help companies be responsible only for employees over whom they have direct control by setting their hours, wages, or job responsibilities. They could get around the requirement by hiring staffing agencies and subcontractors that deal more closely with the workers.
But the National Labor Relations Board charted a new course Thursday. A regional director initially ruled in favor of Browning-Ferris, but the Teamsters union, which represents the workers, appealed the case to the national board.
It’s the latest in a string of major victories for labor groups under the Obama administration, which has already issued several sweeping executive actions on worker protections and wages.
The Democratic-controlled NLRB — which has a recent history of ruling against businesses — has also taken steps to make it easier for employees to unionize.
But the Browning-Ferris decision has generated the most attention from businesses and labor groups alike.
The implications go far beyond Browning-Ferris, businesses say. The ruling seeks to redefine what constitutes an “employer” in the United States and could potentially upend entire industries.
The NLRB’s ruling in Browning-Ferris has been the most anticipated labor decision in years as it could have ripple effects throughout the entire business sector.
The ruling could have an impact on not only Browning-Ferris and other garbage disposal businesses, but also companies such as restaurants, retailers, manufacturers, hotels, cleaning services, construction firms, security providers and staffing agencies.
Businesses are threatening to cut ties with staffing agencies that help recruit temporary workers and subcontractors that provide janitorial and security services, because they don’t want to be responsible for another company’s employees. They say they would rather bring those jobs in-house to establish more control over the situation.
Restaurants could see the biggest changes. Fast food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King will likely assert more authority — or could even cut ties altogether — with local franchise owners, businesses say.
Sounds like total fashist govt control. I cherished my time as an indepent contractor.
Bad news for FedEx. Their drivers are mostly contractors.
Congress needs to stop this right now! They need to ..... oh wait. Never mind.
Didn’t a court rule NLRB was illegal?
FedEx Ground & Freight are, not Express.
Another strike against business by the 0bama commie controlled NLRB.
It is going to take years for the next President to fix everything that Obama has done.
Not years. Obama set the precedent so a Republican president can use executive fiat.
Meanwhile the Chamber of Commerce is only concerned with ensuring cheap Mexican labor.
No surprise, everything he does is anti-business.
Expect the big general construction contractors to push back big time in courts.
Specialty sub-contractors have the equipment, capacity, engineers, fabrication and installation crews which a general contractor cannot afford on permanent payroll.
As a small specialty design/construct company, I sub-contracted concrete work. This ruling sounds as if the chain of my responsibilty extends to sub-contractor,then concrete/supplier/transit mixer and so on.
How can I possibly know all the laws and regulations governing large scale concrete suppliers?
Guy falls into dry component mixing tower because of whatever and I get named as defendant in a shotgun complaint? Or some hairy fairy there decides he’s feeling womanly one week and I part of the discrimination suit?
Sort of.
They ruled that the recess appointment of a Democrat member who was being filibustered by the Republicans was illegal.
However the ruling came at about the same time that Harry Reid pulled the nuclear option on nomination votes. So the Dems were able to vote a Dem in on a simple majority.
Just another example of how the Dems are successfully managing to rig the entire system to circumvent democratic representative principles and checks/balances to their advantage. This isn’t really a “victory”, because the outcome was never in doubt. It was a foregone conclusion.
What I’m going to love to do, if that happens, is go in and see who the owners and executives of those big firms donated money to.
For a lot of people getting screwed by stuff like this they’re just reaping what they’ve sown. Just with a lot of collateral damage.
Easily solved. Don’t hire contractors, hire full time employees.
I worked for MSFT for 12 years and I can tell you first hand, that many companies have popped up just to provide them with workers so that they don’t have to hire these people as full-time employees with benefits. Pay is also often 1/2 to 1/3 of what a regular employee makes. There’s an odd type nepotism that goes on between the corporation and the contracting agency. Also, contractors often do suffer abuse not from their parent companies, but from the contracting company and even if you’re a great performer, you can be terminated with no notice and no reason given.
This doesn’t mean that I think this particular decision is a good one, just saying that these issues aren’t always as black and white as they might seem on the surface.
Thank you for clarifying that for me.
Labor board rules against business in pivotal joint employer decision
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
Not only have the states never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate intrastate labor, but also consider the following.
The Founding States had made the first numbered clauses in the Constitution, Sections 1-3 of Article I, to clarify that all federal legislative powers are vested in the elected members of Congress, not in the executive or judicial branches or in non-elected federal bureaucrats like those running the NLRB. So the unconstitutional NLRP, established under Constitution-ignoring FDR, is making regulatory decisions that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to make.
And FDR had help in establishing the NLRB. More specifically, the corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Senate failed to kill the unconstitutional National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) bill which helped FDR to establish the NLRB. NIRA was unconstitutional because a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified that the states have never delegate to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate intrastate commerce.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
In fact, the Supreme Court declared NIRA unconstitutional in 1935.
The ill-conceived 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt senators, along with unconstitutional federal regulatory agencies like the NLRB, along with it.
“hired Leadpoint Business Services to staff a recycling facility “
That makes them employees. If they look like employees, they are employees.
Outsourced IT is very shaky on this matter.
The people who are really going to feel this are the Kelly Temp Services of the world. Especially those working in Amazon warehouses and other light industrial facilities where the incidence of injury is high.
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