Employment & Labor Insider

The National Labor Relations Board is busy -- the Board came out late last week with a decision saying that employees can have access to their employers' email systems for organizing activities under most circumstances. David Phippen has the full story here.

Also, on Friday, the Board issued its final rule on "quickie elections." David is reviewing the new rule and will have a comprehensive bulletin very soon. Meanwhile, here is what he had to say about that on Friday (since it's Tuesday now, I've made a few minor updates):

The National Labor Relations Board announced Friday its final rule on representation case procedures (familiarly known as “the Quickie Election Rule”). The final rule was published yesterday in the Federal Register and will take effect on April 14, 2015.

The final rule essentially includes, with slight modifications here and there, all of the troublesome items proposed in 2014, which we summarized in February. The new regulations generally (1) compress the timetable between petition and election, making it more difficult for the employer and employees opposing a petitioning union to make their cases and retain potentially necessary legal counsel, (2) give unions access to more information about employees, (3) set up numerous procedural requirements for employers to meet or potentially be tripped up later in the case, (4) limit hearing issues and appeals that may be raised before an election, which could allow elections to take place despite uncertainty about supervisory status and individuals’ eligibility to vote.

We are reviewing the regulations and will issue a more comprehensive Client Bulletin shortly.

More to come -- don't you dare go away!