The Supreme Court will soon be ruling on the question of whether union contracts can legally include provisions where employees waive the right to join in class-action lawsuits. While unions and the NLRB argue that this provision violates an employee’s inherent right to “collective action,” management argues that all disputes should be settled individually, by way of binding arbitration, a method that has proven quicker and less expensive.
This reached the Supreme Court as a result of the lower courts being split on the issue. And with the Supreme Court being composed of five, pro-business, anti-labor conservatives (Justices Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch and Kennedy), two pro-labor lefties (Kagan and Sotomayor), and two middle-of-the road liberals (Ginsburg and Breyer), the smart money is on the Court ruling against the NLRB. One more nail in labor’s coffin.
Consider an actual case I was familiar with, one that occurred in the early 1990s, at an industrial plant in Northern California. The union contract required all workers to receive a 30-minute meal period by the end of the fifth hour of work. So, for example, if you start work at 7:30 AM, you needed to be relieved by noon, in order to squeeze in your 30-minute lunch by 12:30 PM (which marked the end of the fifth hour).
Generally speaking, no one was going to complain if they didn’t get sent out exactly on time, or if they were asked to take only 20 minutes. That was partly because…