Oregon manufacturing employers have been following the ongoing turmoil surrounding the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries’ (“BOLI”) recent interpretation of Oregon’s requirement that manufacturing employees receive overtime when they work more than 10 hours in a day.  In the latest turn, a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge ruled yesterday that, contrary to BOLI’s advice, a manufacturing employer is not required to pay employees daily overtime and weekly overtime when manufacturing employees work more than 40 hours in a work week.  Instead, the judge ruled that the employer must pay the employees the greater of either weekly overtime or daily overtime, but not both. A copy of the opinion in the case (Mazahua v. Portland Specialty Baking LLC) is here.

Here is the background.  
Continue Reading Breaking: Court Rules Against Double Overtime for Oregon Manufacturing Employers

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has suffered a series of setbacks recently at the hands of federal judges.  In December, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals largely struck down the NLRB’s prohibition on class action waivers in arbitration agreements.  Now, on January 6, 2014, the NLRB announced that it won’t seek Supreme Court review of two U.S. Court of Appeals decisions invalidating its Notice Posting Rule, which would have required most private sector employers to post a notice informing employees of their right to organize. The deadline for seeking Supreme Court review passed January 2.

The legal effect of this “non-event” is that it allows to stand two appellate court decisions that invalidated NLRB’s 2011 adoption of a rule.  In May 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held in National Ass’n of Manufacturers v. NLRB, 717 F.3d 947 (D.C. Cir. 2013) that requiring employers to post the statement of rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) would be inconsistent with Section 8(c) of the act, which essentially gives employers the right to speak freely to their employees so long as the communications aren’t coercive. The Court also held that NLRB lacked authority to promulgate the regulation, because it would have effectively modified the federal statutory time limit for filing unfair labor practice charges. A month later, the Fourth Circuit ruled against the NLRB and sustained a second challenge to the regulation in Chamber of Commerce v. NLRB, 721 F.3d 152 (4th Cir. 2013).Continue Reading NLRB Effectively Scraps Plans (For Now) To Pursue Notice Posting Rule By Deciding Not To Seek Review By U.S. Supreme Court