Articles Discussing General Issue Relating To Labor Unions.

On August 27, 2015, the National Labor Relations Board, in Lincoln Lutheran of Racine, 362 NLRB No. 188, overturned 53 years of precedent, holding that, like most other terms and conditions of employment, an employer’s obligation to check off union dues continues after expiration of a collective bargaining agreement that contains such a provision. The Board’s determination is not surprising in light of its 2012 decision in WKYC-TV1, which held similarly, but was overturned (on procedural grounds) by the U.S. Supreme Court in NLRB v. Noel Canning, 134 S.Ct. 2550 (2014).

As we previously observed here, no cases that were invalidated by the United States Supreme Court in Noel Canning v. NLRB remain for the National Labor Relations Board to decide.

On June 30, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Illinois law that required homecare providers for Medicaid recipients to pay fees to a union. In Harris v. Quinn, the Court held that compulsory union agency fees imposed on Illinois homecare workers violated the First Amendment. The Court, however, did not issue a more expansive ruling that would have overruled Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U.S. 209 (1977) and affected public-sector unionization and agency fees as a whole. While the Court’s decision was narrow, it has widespread implications for the home healthcare industry as many other states allow homecare workers to unionize under statutory arrangements similar to those in Illinois, including California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday delivered a limited blow to public sector unions. In Harris v. Quinn, the Court held that compulsory union agency fees imposed on Illinois home care workers violate the First Amendment. However, the Court held back from issuing a more expansive ruling that could have sounded the death knell for public sector unionism as a whole. Specifically, the Court did not overrule its 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Educ., in which it held that an agency-shop clause was valid for public sector employees so long as the fees are used for collective-bargaining, contract-administration, grievance-adjustment purposes, and other activities “germane to its duties as collective-bargaining representative.” Instead, the Court in Harris distinguished the home care workers from “full-fledged public employees” and declined to apply Abood. As a result, the personal care providers in this case cannot be compelled to accept and financially support the union as their exclusive representative.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to require Medicaid home health service personal assistants in Illinois to pay “agency fees” to a public-sector union certified to represent those employees in collective bargaining with the state. While technically a defeat for labor organizations, the high court stopped just short of overruling the 37-year-old precedent established in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977), which allows a state to require a non-member public employee to pay a fee for collective bargaining and related services to the union designated to represent this class of employees.

Executive Summary: Citing the Communications Decency Act, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge held that a union that maintained a Facebook page did not have a duty to disavow threatening comments posted by union members.

Calling the SEIU’s “aggressive use of power to collect fees from nonmembers indefensible,” the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, has held that the union violated the First Amendment by not sending a new Hudson notice when it levied a special assessment to meet expenses that were not disclosed when the amount of the regular assessment was set.