The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board), which continues to apply an ever expanding standard for determining whether a company that contracts with another business to supply contract labor or services in support of its operations should be treated as a joint employer of the supplier or contractor’s employees, is now considering whether a company’s requirement that its suppliers and contractors comply with its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Policy, which includes minimum standards for the contractor or supplier’s practices with its own employees can support a claim that the customer is a joint employer.

Unions are Pursuing Joint Employer Claims Based On CSR Policies

My colleague  and I recently examined a case in an article in which the Temporary Workers Of America , (TWOA) argued just that, seeking to require the client of the Lionbridge Technologies, the company that actually employs the workers it represents, to participate in negotiations for an initial collective bargaining agreement after the TWOA was certified by the NLRB as the representative of a unit of agency temporaries. Notably, TWOA describes itself as “a start up union devoted to defend and promote the interests of workers classified as ‘temporary.’” Notably, when the TWOA filed its petition for a representation election, it did not claim at that time that the temporary employer’s client was a joint employer with it and only did so after it won the election and was certified.

When the client declined the union’s request to participate because it was not an employer, the TWOA filed unfair labor practice (ULP) charges alleging that the client was unlawfully refusing to bargain. The Board has been aggressively investigating that assertion, including issuing investigative subpoenas to the alleged joint employer demanding extensive documentation and information from it concerning its business relationship with its supplier.

The NLRB’ Is Aggressively Using Its Subpoena Power to Investigative Joint Employer Allegations

While the customer moved to revoke the investigative subpoenas, the Board denied its motion to revoke the investigative subpoena, noting its “broad investigative authority, which extends not only to substantive allegations of a charge, but to ‘any matter under investigation or in question’ in the proceeding.” (emphasis in original).  Referring to its broad investigative powers, Members Hirozawa and McFarren went on to say that nothing in the Board’s Rules “can be read to impose a requirement that the Regional Director articulate ‘an objective factual basis’ in order to compel the production of information that is necessary to investigate” a pending ULP charge.

Dissenting, Member Miscimarra challenged the use of investigative subpoenas by the Regional Director to pursue the TWOA’s bare faced assertion that the contractor-employer’s client was a joint employer of its personnel. “I believe that a subpoena seeking documents pertaining to an alleged joint-employer and/or single employer status of a charged party requires ‘more . . . .than merely stating the name of a possible single or joint employer on the face of the charge,’” and that, as Section 10054.4 of the Board’s own Casehandling Manual holds, documentary evidence such as that which the Board’s subpoena called for should only be pursued if “consideration of the charging party’s evidence and the preliminary information from the charged party suggests a prima facie case.” (emphasis in original).  Here Member Miscimarra points out the TWOA merely claimed Lionbridge Technologies and its client were a “’joint employer’ without additional factual information about the joint employer allegation.”

What This Means For Employers Now

Since the Board issued its decision in Browning Ferris Industries last August, lowering the threshold for finding a joint employer relationship, it has continued to open the gates for increased organizing and union activity, including announcing it will hold elections and certify unions to represent units made up of both directly employed and secondarily employed employees in its Miller & Anderson, Inc. decision this past June.

As with the TWOA and its pursuit of Lionbridge and its client as joint employers, unions are now taking advantage of these opportunities in a number of ways, both in representation cases and by demanding that putative joint employers come to the table for bargaining.

Employers are well advised to review the full range of their operations and personnel decisions, including their use of contingent and temporaries and personnel supplied by temporary and other staffing agencies to assess their vulnerability to such action and to determine what steps they make take to better position themselves for the challenges that are surely coming.