THE HILL: …. The labor board determined Browning-Ferris should be considered a “joint employer” with the Phoenix-based staffing agency. As a result, the company can be pulled into collective bargaining negotiations with those employees and held liable for any labor violations committed against them.
The NLRB ruling is a sharp departure from previous decisions that stated companies were only responsible for employees who were under their direct control. Without the power to set hours, wages or job responsibilities, the earlier rulings held, companies could not be held responsible for the labor practices of the contractors…
“It will make it much harder for self-employed subcontractors to get jobs,” said Beth Milito, senior legal counsel at the NFIB. “Subcontractors will come under pressure by their clients to change their employment policies or they’ll be cut out of the picture altogether.”… (more)
EDITOR: We are posting this second article on the NLRB decision with the hope that it may bring more clarity to the situation, which at this point in time is mirky at best. We will post more as the media has an opportunity to further analyze the significance of the ruling. This could be very big… or maybe not.
