Free Republic

"This outside entity sending this email has no legal authority over me," she said. "And even in the Office of Personnel Management's own description of this email program, this mass federal email program, all replies are voluntary. So I think this is all a big threat to coerce federal employees, and what we need to be doing right now is speaking up against this and standing against this so that we can get back to our work of serving the American public, so I can get back to actually doing my job." She argued that, on one hand, she is...

Gwynne Wilcox: screen image YouTube President Trump is on a roll and cleaning house. Trump fired Biden-appointed Democrat chair of the National Labor Relations Board Gwynne Wilcox and the general counsel of the board in the latest shakeup. Trump’s decision to fire pro-union members Gwynne Wilcox and the labor board’s general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is getting pushback from the agency and is being described as an “unprecedented and illegal” move. Gwynne Wilcox may challenge Trump’s decision to fire her. In a statement to Reuters, Wilcox said she will pursue “all legal avenues” to challenge Trump’s firing. Axios reported: President Trump...

The Senate failed to end debate on a bid to extend the tenure of Lauren McFerran at the National Labor Relations Board after drama on the Senate floor — and a final decisive “no” vote from Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.). Majority Leader Chuck Schumer hoped to extend McFerran’s tenure at the NLRB to give Democrats effective control of the body into 2026 — part of the way through President-elect Donald Trump’s second term. The floor stayed open at length awaiting a decision from Manchin with the tally tied at 49. The retiring West Virginian, who voted against several NLRB picks...

Senator Joe Manchin just walked onto the Senate floor as the deciding vote to DENY Democrats' left-wing selection for the National Labor Relations Board, Lauren McFerran. This now means Republicans could gain a majority on the NLRB when Trump takes office. ... The GOP can now confirm two nominees to the board. If this happens, Republicans will have a one-seat majority ... This was made possible by JD Vance RUSHING to D.C. all the way from Mar-a-Lago today to vote against Lauren McFerran .. He got on a plane to Washington specifically to be in the Senate for this vote."...

Chuck Schumer is trying to ram through Dem activist Lauren McFerran for another term chairing the National Labor Relations Board—a very big deal. If successful, we will have a Dem Chair of the NLRB for the first 2 YEARS of Trump's Presidency. We need every GOP Senator to show up and block her ... enSchumer just FILED CLOTURE on the nominations of Lauren McFerran and Joshua Ditelberg to be members of the National Labor Relations Board ... Senate Republicans must show up and vote NO. We’re watching you ... Chuck Schumer is doing everything he can to sabotage Trump's presidency...

*** Here's another one that can fit right into the Make America Great restoration: Requiring unions to recertify with the workers they purport to represent.Sean Higgins, a former colleague at Investor's Business Daily, now at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has a great new piece on just how badly this cleanup is needed.He begins it this way: Imagine if you lived in a country where a vote held decades previous determined which party held control of the government and people had little to no say over who ran the party. That’s the situation many workers must deal with if they’re unionized....

National Labor Relations Board Administrative Law Judge Geoffrey Carter ordered Starbucks to reopen “within a reasonable period of time” two Ithaca locations that closed after employees formed a union, stating that its move to “chill unionism” violated the National Labor Relations Act. Carter ruled on Friday that the May 2023 permanent closures of the Ithaca Commons and Meadow Street Starbucks locations and failure to bargain with the union were unlawful, as the board found the stores were closed for “antiunion reasons” and in an effort to quell unionizations elsewhere. The NLRB similarly ordered on July 6, 2023, that the third...

Amazon is challenging the structure of the National Labor Relations Board in a lawsuit that also accuses the agency of improperly influencing the outcome of a union election at a company warehouse more than two years ago. The complaint, filed Thursday at a federal court in San Antonio, mirrors legal arguments the tech giant made in front of the agency earlier this year after NLRB prosecutors accused the company of maintaining policies that made it challenging for workers to organize and retaliating against some who did so. In the new legal filing, attorneys for Amazon pointed back to a lawsuit...

"But, the reasonable-cause standard goes far beyond simply fine tuning the traditional criteria to the §10( j) context—it substantively lowers the bar for securing a preliminary injunction by requiring courts to yield to the Board’s preliminary view of the facts, law, and equities."

Democrats hate the gig economy, since they can’t force independent contractors to join unions (and thus rake off their union dues). So Biden’s NLRB issued a “joint-employer standard” to force companies to treat gig employees and subcontractors as subject to union representation. Well, a federal judge in Texas squashed that rule. Last week, a federal judge in Texas issued a ruling that struck down a new joint-employer standard by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that would have classified numerous companies as “employers” of specific contract and franchise employees, obligating them to negotiate with unions representing those workers. U.S....

As we all have seen, corporate America has become militantly pro-LGBT and anti-Christian over the past few decades.... James Earls has worked at UPS for 35 years and is a devout Christian. He has received some of UPS’s highest awards for safety and loyalty. He is a driver of a large UPS “feeder truck.” He lives in Alabama and is represented by Teamsters Local 402. .. During the celebration of Gay Pride Month a few years ago, James entered the UPS facility in Madison, Alabama. UPS was showing its support and dedication to the LGBT movement by broadcasting images on...

Rocket and satellite maker SpaceX on Thursday sued a U.S. labor board to block its case accusing the company of illegally firing employees who sent a letter to company executives calling CEO Elon Musk “a distraction and embarrassment.” SpaceX in the lawsuit filed in Brownsville, Texas federal court claims the structure of the National Labor Relations Board(NLRB), which issued a complaint against the company on Wednesday, violates the U.S. Constitution. The NLRB alleges SpaceX violated federal labor law by firing eight workers in 2022 for signing onto the letter, which accused Musk of making sexist comments that went against company...

Newly introduced legislation would significantly limit the power of the National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency that currently holds broad sway over businesses, including small businesses. Critics say the agency, which aims to help private sector workers, has become highly politicized, doing the bidding of labor unions that are working with the Democratic party as small businesses pay the price. U.S. Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., introduced the “Small Businesses Before Bureaucrats Act” this week. In 1958, Congress set standards for which businesses the NLRB had jurisdiction over, which includes any retail business with annual revenue topping $500,000 and...

Companies can no longer offer severance agreements that prevent employees from making disparaging remarks about their former employer, the National Labor Relations Board ruled Tuesday. The big picture: The federal agency said these agreements require employees to waive their rights under the National Labor Relations Act, and that such policies are a violation of the act. According to the NLRB, "the employer’s offer is itself an attempt to deter employees from exercising their statutory rights, at a time when employees may feel they must give up their rights in order to get the benefits provided in the agreement." Employees also...

In sweeping new proposals, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, announced her intention to limit employers in their ability to rely upon commonly used electronic monitoring and management technologies to monitor employee misconduct and performance issues. If adopted by the Board, the General Counsel’s proposals would have an enormous impact on employers in the exercise of their legitimate business interests to manage and monitor employee performance, during work hours, and impose appropriate discipline. Under the previous NLRB framework, employers were free to adopt technological changes that allowed them to more closely monitor employee work activity with...

Home Depot workers do not have the right to wear Black Lives Matter merchandise or imagery while on the job, a federal judge has ruled. In his ruling Friday, administrative judge Paul Bogas rejected a complaint from the US National Labor Relations Board that the home improvement retailer violated employees’ rights by barring them from displaying BLM gear

Workers allege the action is retaliatory, but the chain says closures are "a regular part of our operations." With thousands of locations nationwide, a single Starbucks closing typically isn't national news. But at a time when the coffee chain is dealing with a major unionization push from employees — and being accused of potentially illegal anti-union behavior in the process — the announcement that Starbucks is shuttering a unionized store in Ithaca, New York, is grabbing a lot of attention. Starbucks Workers United, the national group behind Starbucks employees' unionization efforts, said they would once again be filing an Unfair...

The upscale grocery chain Whole Foods claims the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) order to allow its employees to wear “Black Lives Matter” masks violates its constitutional rights. In October 2020, the Amazon-owned Whole Foods stoked controversy when it announced a new dress code policy that banned its employees from wearing “busy patterns on clothing or face coverings, buttons or pins on employee aprons, ripped jeans, athleisure, and t-shirts with visible logos, slogans, messages, or flags of any kind,” according to Insider. “When a lot of us started working at Whole Foods back in the day, it was a place...

In September 2021, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) underwent a leadership change with the appointment of Jennifer Abruzzo as General Counsel. Her appointment follows two new Democratic members, Gwynne Wilcox and David Prouty, being confirmed over the summer, resulting in a 3-2 Democratic majority. The General Counsel determines which cases are brought before the NLRB, and Abruzzo has been quick to make several sweeping changes that unfortunately will leave workers worse off. While Abruzzo is primarily concerned with micro-managing the contents of agreements between employees and employers, the proposed changes provide unwanted and unnecessary bureaucratic oversight that will burden...

Two of the nation's top labor arbiters will not recuse themselves from a case involving their former employer, a chief Democratic Party ally. David Prouty and Gwynne Wilcox serve on the five-member National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that dictates labor laws. Board chairman Lauren McFerran announced Friday that the pair will not recuse themselves from a lawsuit filed by the Service Employees International Union, their former employer. The SEIU is challenging a Trump-era "joint employment" rule, which holds that franchises are distinct from parent companies. Prouty directly opposed the Trump rule at the SEIU, as did Wilcox. Their...