If you don’t know about the Powell Memo, you should. And, if you’ve heard of it, but haven’t read it, you ought to read it. The Powell Memo, written in 1971 by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell to the Chairman of the Education Committee of the U.S. C... More »
Louis Brandeis famously wrote “publicity is justly recommended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” We now live in a world where citizens, armed with c... More »
I wrote about the now-infamous case where Brett Kavanaugh dissented from an opinion upholding a fine by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) against SeaWorld after a killer whale lived up to its name by killing a trainer. As a result of th... More »
The Trump appointees on the NLRB have proposed a new “joint employer” rule that they claim will foster “predictability and consistency.” But, it is readily apparent that the proposed rule will not accomplish these goals. The proposed rule will, however, resul... More »
Earlier this month, Missourians reminded us that there were a lot of pro-union Trump voters. Some of these voters just care more about other issues, but others probably don’t realize how much Trump is trying to strip away the few rights workers have under ou... More »
In ruling on a case involving the rights of telephone company employees to wear union t-shirts while they were working, Brett Kavanaugh began his opinion with the observation that “common sense sometimes matters in resolving legal disputes.” But, as the case ... More »
In 2010, a trainer at SeaWorld drowned when the killer whale she was working with during a performance “grabbed her and pulled her off the platform into the pool, refusing to release her.” The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigated ... More »
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone that when faced with a choice between originalism and right-wing ideology, the Supreme Court’s two avowed originalists, Justices Gorsuch and Thomas, decided that they weren’t going to let doctrinal purity get in t... More »
NLRB Chairman John Ring recently wrote a letter to Senators Warren, Gillibrand, and Sanders defending the Board’s decision to move forward with rule-making to modify its joint employer standard. In his letter, Ring repeats what has become something of a mantr... More »
After the oral argument in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, I wrote that the five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court would have to put their thumbs heavily on the scale for the employers to prevail. Sadly, it was no surprise that this is exactly what happe... More »
In 1964, Congress outlawed discrimination in employment based on race or sex, yet there is still a significant gap in the wages paid to white men compared to wages paid to other groups. Last year, the City of Philadelphia tried to address this wage gap by pas... More »
Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court decided Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro, one of those “boring” cases that no one pays attention to. The question in the case was whether service advisors at car dealerships are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act ... More »