WATCH: NLRB General Counsel Says She Will Impose Decades-Old 'Card Check' Legal Doctrine
NLRB GC Abruzzo says she will impose more bargaining orders on employers who violate their employees' rights to unionize, or cannot prove good-faith doubt of a union's majority status.
QUICK FACTS:
NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo would like to end so-called ‘captive audience’ meetings. However, without labor law reform, she cannot do so easily
GC Abruzzo can, though, work to impose more bargaining orders on employers through a little-known and decades-old legal doctrine called the ‘Joy Silk Doctrine’
GC Abruzzo is already setting the stage to implement Joy Silk Doctrine now.
DETAILS
The General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, Jennifer Abruzzo, has a mission: To use her agency’s powers to help unions and, where possible, end employer opposition to unions.
In a five-minute video posted to Twitter by the More Perfect Union media organization, GC Abruzzo explains how, if she could, she would ban employer from holding so-called ‘captive audience’ meetings.
However, since an outright ban is not likely without changing the law through something like the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (or PRO Act), GC Abruzzo has a fall-back strategy: To use a little known legal doctrine called the “Joy Silk Doctrine.”
WATCH:
The implementation of the Joy Silk Doctrine—which goes back to 1949—would to require employers to bargain with unions when a majority of employees have signed union authorizations and the employer cannot prove it has a good-faith doubt of the union’s majority status, or where an employer has violated its employees rights to unionize.
General Counsel Abruzzo first mentioned the Joy Silk Doctrine publicly last August when she issued a “Mandatory Submission to Advice” memorandum [in PDF here] to all NLRB Regions.
On page 7 of the memorandum, GC Abruzzo instructed all NRLM regions to submit:
“Cases in which an employer refuses to recognize and bargain with a union where the union presents evidence of a card majority, but where the employer is unable to establish a good faith doubt as to majority status; specifically, where the employer refusing to recognize has either engaged in unfair labor practices or where the employer is unable to explain its reason for doubting majority status in rejecting the union’s demand. See Joy Silk Mills, Inc., 85 NLRB 1263 (1949).”
Since GC Abruzzo’s August memo, the NLRB has not yet issued any bargaining orders under the Joy Silk Doctrine.
However, as stated in the video, it sounds as though it may be happening soon.