EVERY few decades there is a sea change in the rules governing labour relations in the United States. In the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt shifted the balance of power towards labour. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan shifted it back towards employers. Two new legal rulings raise the possibility that the balance of power is changing again.
On August 27th the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that Browning-Ferris Industries, a Californian recycling company, is the “joint employer” of people hired by one of its contractors, thereby obliging it to engage in collective bargaining with the Teamsters union. On September 1st a federal judge allowed a class-action lawsuit to proceed against Uber, a taxi-hailing service, in which three drivers argue they should be treated as employees.
The NLRB, which has a 3-2 Democratic majority, has been getting more assertive since 2011, when it issued a (still ongoing) complaint against Boeing for transferring an aircraft production line to a non-union factory. It is currently mulling a ruling that could define McDonald’s as a joint employer of staff in franchised restaurants. In June FedEx agreed to pay $228m to settle a court case brought by Californian drivers who complained of being misclassified as contractors. In the same month an Uber driver won a ruling from California’s labour...
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1OaMtgp
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