The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that union membership continues its over 40-year decline. Union membership in 2022 declined to 10.1% of U.S. workforce down from 10.3% in 2021. That said, total union membership rose by 273,000 to about 14.3 million workers. But, because of the number of U.S. wage and salary workers (most non-union) grew by 5.3 million workers the reported union membership as a percentage of that total workforce continued to show a decline.

With the Michigan Democratic party taking control of both sides of the Michigan Legislature this past fall, Democrat Legislators began calling for repeal of Michigan’s Right to Work law.

Employers can use a number of different methods of electronic monitoring in the workplace ostensibly to improve productivity and ensure security of the business. These methods can be:

Imagine, if you will, an employee calling the owner of the employing company a derogatory term to their face. The employer understandably fires the employee only to have the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) order the employer to reinstate the employee.

As many EPTW readers know, ASE is reporting on the activities of the pro-labor National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as they change their policy and case decisions tilting the labor playing field in favor of unions and their ability to organize employers.  At the end of July this year, the NLRB released an advice memorandum stating that it was evaluating whether to extend what are called Weingarten rights to non-union workers.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued it first precedent-shifting decision of the Biden Administration on August 29th. Tesla, Inc. (2021). While there has been a lot of conjecture that this NLRB will make some big pro-labor changes when they get the chance, so far it has been more talk and memos than formal decisions – until now.  

As we approach Labor Day 2022, the media (and most likely the Biden Administration) will be heralding organized labor’s resurgence as it has done at this time of the year for decades.  Jarret Skorup’s Labor Unions Are Not in a “Resurgence” points out the media’s annual labor-fest prognostication with a short listing by year of articles announcing labor’s alleged comebacks heralded over two decades.

2022 is a banner year for union organizing.  1,411 U.S. workplaces filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data, which represents a 69% increase from the same period in 2021 and the most of any year since 2015.  Yet only 10.3% of workers were in unions, down from 29.3% in 1964 according to studies.  Of the 1,411 workplaces filing petitions filed, about 400, representing more than 21,000 workers, have...

As ASE has previously reported, worker union organizing is getting a lot of attention across the country. A recent study by the Worker Empowerment Research Network (WERN) that is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL), highlights what union conditions are usually present in the workplace for conditions to be right for organizing. This information also provides employers valuable insight into how they can avoid allowing those conditions to develop in their workplace.

The Biden Administration’s pro-labor policies are being heavily pushed by the agency responsible for overseeing employee and employer labor rights, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB is governed by the law that it is charged with interpreting and administering. This is of course the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

A fascinating conflict between the National Labor Relations Act labor rights interpretation and the Civil Rights Act’s Title VII anti-discrimination protections is growing. Some federal lawmakers are criticizing the National Labor Relations Board for its recent decision that undermined Amazon, the large online retailer, by forcing them to reinstate a worker that was fired because of his crude, sexist, degrading statements made to a female coworker during the organizing campaign.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is working to take out the impediment of organizing elections to further its pro-labor agenda. Holding a secret ballot election is a fundamental step under the National Labor Relations Act in determining whether workers want a union or not.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a former Special Counsel for the Communications Workers of America union and now the NLRB’s top prosecutor, issued a memo (Memorandum 22-4) to its District Offices last week intended to make it illegal for employers to hold meetings or even meet one-on-one with their employees to discuss union versus union-free in their own workplaces.

In last week’s State of the Union address by President Biden, in addition to his opening focus on the Russian invasion he pointed out four legislative initiatives that he would like to see moved along in the coming months – probably before the mid-term elections if he had his way.

The National Labor Relations Act protects workers' rights to engage in activities intended to allow them to organize into a union. Therefore, most communications intended by workers to support labor organizing are considered protected concerted activity.