Free Republic

Franchise businesses received a significant boost from the Trump administration on Friday as labor regulators began to unravel one of the Obama administration's most controversial employment policies. The National Labor Relations Board is considering a proposal to reinstate the long-standing interpretation of the joint-employer standard, which maintains that parent or umbrella companies are not liable for labor violations committed solely by franchisees or subcontractors. The Obama administration had scrapped the traditional standard in an effort to hold parent companies accountable even if they played no direct role in the workplace violation, giving labor unions a foot in the door for...

Nearly eight decades ago, Congress adopted the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and thus instituted a labor-law system empowering a single union to act as the “exclusive” bargaining agent for all the front-line employees in a business, regardless of whether they wanted to join that union or not. As Herbert Hill, the labor director of the NAACP from 1951 to 1977, noted, the NLRA was adopted despite the “intense opposition of the NAACP, the National Urban League, and other Negro interest groups.” Hill explained: “[M]ost of the unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor [or AFL, a precursor of...

Despite rumors that the "card check" provision may be removed from EFCA, other clauses of this bill will still have a negative impact on the relationship between employers and employees. A few of the changes to the NLRA are neither the employer nor employee will have the right to turn down an arbitrator’s proposed contract. Also, all negotiation will not exceed 120 days of bargaining. Most contract negotiations go beyond 120 days. Maybe because unlike congress both parties read what they are signing!