The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) invited interested parties to submit amicus briefs in Miller & Anderson, Inc. in connection with the Board’s reexamination of critical issues affecting the ability of unions to organize employees employed by temporary and staffing agencies (“temporary employees”) in the same bargaining units as employees of an employer that supplements its direct workforce with temporary employees.

Elections Involving Joint-Employers

Under the existing law, the Board will only conduct an election and certify a unit that includes employees of joint employers if both of the joint employers agree to such an arrangement.  The Board’s grant of the petitioning union’s request for review of a regional director’s dismissal of petition for an election because one of the joint employers did not agree, appears to telegraph the Board’s intention to abandon that requirement.

Easing the Test for Finding a Joint-Employer Relationship

The NLRB has previously suggested when it invited amicus briefs in imminently in Browning-Ferris that it is about to adopt a new test, based on what it calls “economic realities,” for deciding whether a business is a joint employer with another entity such as a temporary agency or employee leasing service, of the personnel that the agency supplies to work for its client.

More Elections and Unions Representing Temps

If it does so, and then decides in Miller & Associates to create an easier pathway for temporary employees, part-time employees and other contingent workers” to obtain union representation, and be included in bargaining units alongside “regular employees” employed by the principal employer, could radically change the landscape and lead to organizing and bargaining over terms and conditions for temporaries and other contingent workers.  The bargaining obligation would apply not only to the staffing agency that writes a temporary worker’s paycheck, but also to the temporary agency’s client for whom the temporary worker does work.

Under the Board’s 2014 decision in Oakwood Care Center a bargaining unit composed of both “solely employed employees” and jointly-employed employees would only be found to be an appropriate unit for bargaining and the Board would only direct an election in a unit of jointly and solely employed employees if both of the employers (i.e. the principal employer and the temporary or staffing agency supplying personnel to work with the principal employer’s employees) consented to such an arrangement.  Not surprisingly, few, if any, employers agreed to this.

Why Is the Board Doing This Now?

What the Board has indicated in its July 6, 2015 Notice and Invitation to File Briefs is that it is, at a minimum, looking at abandoning the requirement of consent of both employers and returning to the legal standards that preceded Oakwood, which standard was adopted by the Board in 2000, during the Clinton Administration in M.B. Sturgis which had permitted the Board to direct an election in a unit included both solely employed and jointly employed employees without the need for the consent of the two employers.

The fact that the Board has now, after three years, granted the union’s 2012 request for review of a Regional Director’s decision in Miller & Anderson stating that the union’s appeal of the dismissal of its election petition  “raises substantial issues warranting review with respect to the applicability of Oakwood Care Center,” strongly suggests that the Board intends to eliminate the requirement that when a union seeks an election in a unit including  employees the Board finds to be employed by joint-employers, that both employers must consent for an election to take place.

What To Expect

Given the expectation that the Board will shortly announce a much relaxed standard for finding employers to be joint-employers, this is not surprising.  However, what it also likely presages is a continuation of the union campaigns, such as those in the realm of franchisor-franchisee relationships in fast food and elsewhere and the Board’s movement towards more findings of joint employer status.