Labor Relations: What Retailers Need to Know about Labor Law and Unions

This seminar provides a basic overview of U.S. labor law and how it affects retail employers, exploring the National Labor Relations Act and how the NLRB addresses union organizing, collective bargaining, and unfair labor practices in the retail environment. 

With respect to union organizing, Brad Livingston explains how unions are using both conventional and new methods to organize retailers, the use of community action groups and employee walkouts to disrupt store operations, and the legal and practical issues most retailers face when confronted by these organizing tactics.  Among other issues, Mr. Livingston explains the potential bargaining units that unions may organize at retail stores; the NLRB election process; and the rights and limits on a union’s ability to access a retailer’s stores, parking lots or shopping center common areas and to publicize their dispute with an employer via picketing, handbilling, consumer boycotts, and other means.

Regarding collective bargaining, Mr. Livingston explains the ground rules for labor negotiations laid out by the NLRB, the subjects for bargaining, and the use of economic weapons such as a strike or lockout during a labor dispute and what it means for store deliveries and customer access. 

With respect to unfair labor practices, Mr. Livingston explains how the NLRB balances the rights of employees, unions and employers, with particular emphasis on recent NLRB decisions regarding employer policies and rules concerning social media, confidentiality, and disparagement.  He explains how recent NLRB decisions have expanded protections for employees and unions, even in a non-union context.    

Learning Objectives:

I.    Grasp the basic principles underlying the National Labor Relations Act, how the NLRB processes work, and how they apply to retailers -- whether unionized or not

II.   Comprehend how the NLRB election process works in a retail environment

III.  Be prepared if a labor union and its allies use a variety of pressure tactics to organize part or all of a retailer’s operations

IV.  Gain knowledge of the collective bargaining process and its application to store operations

V.   Appreciate how the NLRB’s unfair labor practice process works and the most common ways that retailers run afoul of the NLRA