The White House has announced that John Ring, co-chair of the Labor & Employment Law practice at a management side law firm, is the President’s choice for the vacancy on the National Labor Relations Board created last month when Board Chairman Phillip Miscimarra completed his term on December 16, 2017. Mr. Ring’s nomination to the Board is subject to Senate confirmation. No date has been set for hearings on the nomination.

The Board is Now Split 2-2

Since Mr. Miscimarra’s departure from the Board, where he was part of a 3-2 Republican majority following the confirmation of Marvin Kaplan, who has now been named Chairman, and William Emanuel, the Board has been composed of 2 Republicans and 2 Democrats, Members Mark Pearce and Lauren McFerran, both appointed by President Obama.

When Mr. Ring is Confirmed A New Republican Majority is Expected to Continue to Revisit Obama Era Decisions Overruling Long Standing Precedents  

During December 2017, the Board issued a number of significant decisions, overruling Obama-era decisions including overturning Browning-Ferris Industriesand returning to a more traditional test for determining whether two businesses are joint-employers, adopting new standards for determining whether facially neutral employer policies and handbooks unlawfully interfere with employees’ Section 7 rights, overturning  which opened the doors to organizing in so-called micro-units, and other decisions seen as tilting the Board’s administration and interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act in favor of unions.  Since Member Miscimarra’s departure however, the Board has been split between 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans, resulting in an inability to form a majority to reverse Obama era holdings.  Provided Mr. Ring is confirmed, the Board will once again return to a 3-2 Republican majority.

There Are a Significant Number of Important Issues the Board’s General Counsel Plans to Ask the Board to Reexamine Once Member Ring Is Confirmed and a Republican Majority Is in Place

In December, General Counsel Peter B. Robb issued GC Memorandum 18-02, Mandatory Submissions to Advice, identifying those issues that he had identified as ones the Board’s Regional Offices should refer to the Division of Advice in the Office of the General Counsel.  These include “cases that involve significant legal issues,” including “cases over the last eight years that overruled precedent and involved one or more dissents, cases involving issues that the Board has not decided, and any other cases that the Region believes will be of importance to the General Counsel.”

The Mandatory Submissions Memo identifies a broad swath of recent Board precedents and topics that must be submitted to Advice, where there is a good chance the new General Counsel will ask the Board to return to pre-Obama Board interpretations of the Act and practices.  These include:

• Joint –Employer – Browning-Ferris Industries’ holding that joint-employer relationships can be found based on “evidence of indirect or potential control over the working conditions of another employer’s employees.

• Use of Employer’s Email Systems for Union Activity– The Mandatory Submission Memo calls for the submission to Advice of all cases involving claims based on Purple Communications’ holding that “employees have a presumptive right to use their employer’s email systems to engage in Section 7 activities. The Memo also explains that the new General Counsel is effectively overruling prior Advice Memoranda in which his predecessor noted his initiative “to extend Purple Communications to other [employer owned] electronic systems,” such as the internet, phones and instant messaging systems that employees regularly use in the course of their work.

• Cases In Which Policies in Employee Handbooks Were Found to Interfere With Section 7 Rights – The Mandatory Submissions Memo indicates the General Counsel will likely be asking the Board to reexamine a broad range of holdings in which policies and conduct standards contained in handbooks and work rules were found to interfere with employees Section 7 rights, in many cases in non-union workplaces. These will include cases finding prohibiting “’disrespectful’ conduct,’ rules prohibiting the use of cameras and recording devices in the workplace, and policies concerning confidentiality in investigations.

• Cases Involving the Standard For Determining Whether Employees Would Find a Work Rule or Policy to Unlawfully Interfere With Section 7 Rights – Which Board Member Miscimarra – One of the areas in which (then) NLRB Chairman Philip Miscimarra most frequently disagreed with his colleagues on the Obama Board was over the Board’s use of the Lutheran Heritage test, which he repeatedly described as a test that “defies common sense.” Look for the new General Counsel to ask the Board to adopt the standard which (then) Chairman Miscimarra proposed in his now legendary dissent in William Beaumont Hospital.

• Cases in Which The Obama Board Expanded the Definition of Concerted Activity For Mutual Aid and Protection – In cases such as Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market the Obama Board expanded the circumstances in which it would find an employee’s actions to be protected, holding that an employee’s actions involving a matter in which “only one employee had an immediate stake in the outcome to be protected.” Such cases must now be referred to Advice and it can be anticipated the General Counsel will ask the Board to reexamine.

• Cases involving “Obscene, Vulgar or Other Highly Inappropriate Conduct”- The new General Counsel will be considering whether the Board went too far in holding in cases such as Pier Sixty, LLC that even where employees engaged in expletive-laden Facebook post – which hurled vulgar attacks at his manager, his manager’s mother and his family, the employee’s actions remained protected by the Act.

The Mandatory Submissions Memo also identifies each of the following as issues that must be submitted to Advice:

• Work stoppages on employer premises;

• The circumstances in which employers may restrict access to employer property at times when employees are off duty;

• The recent expansion of Weingarten rights in the context of employer-mandated drug testing;

• Employer obligations and rights with respect to wage increases during bargaining, where the increases are provided to unrepresented employees but not the employees whose wages and increases are being bargained;

• Claims by unions that employers are successors by virtue of their hiring a predecessor’s employees as required by local laws;

• The circumstances in which a new employer will be found to be a “perfectly clear successor” obligated to follow its predecessor’s terms and conditions rather than being free to set new terms and conditions for those it hires from a predecessor’s workforce;

• Whether an employer must disclose and produce witness statements prior to arbitrations; and

• Whether employers will be required to continue to honor contractual dues check off provisions after a collective bargaining agreement expires.

The New Majority Can Be Expected to Examine these and Other Questions

It is expected that once Mr. Ring is confirmed and the new majority is in place, the Board will be reconsidering existing precedents concerning these and other issues and looking at the 2014 Amended Election Rules adopted by the Obama Board