McCarter partner Hugh Murray and other thought leaders discuss with Law360 the laws and regulations that made waves in 2019. For example, the National Labor Relations Board issued a rule scaling back an Obama-era regulation that had been intended to streamline the process for workers to vote on whether they want to be represented by a union, with the labor board relaxing certain deadlines.
According to Hugh, this rule changes the pre-election timeframe quite a bit. He said, “At least in the narrow world of union elections, [the rule] is relatively big. What it does, from an employer’s point of view who may not know that a union petition is about to be filed, it’s less of a panic fire-drill than under the [2014] rule.”
He also noted that there was no marked statistical change during the five years the 2014 rule was in place in the number of elections won by unions, and suspects that the board’s latest modifications will not cause those numbers to change significantly.