Labor & Employment Law – Page 19 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Will MPS Get Squeezed Extra Hard?

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:February 14, 2011
Post category:Education & Law Labor & Employment Law Milwaukee Public Schools

We’re entering uncharted territory when it comes to school issues statewide. I think it was clear from pretty far back that Gov. Scott Walker and Republican leaders in the Legislature were going to push for state employees and for teachers across the state (who are not state employees, but the state can influence their job situations) to pay significant shares of their health insurance and pension payments. But I was caught off guard by the move to take away almost all the unions’ bargaining role, as Walker proposed last week.

This is going to be a tumultuous and momentous spring and summer when it comes to education issues statewide. I wonder what all will be different when it comes time to open schools in September.

Permit me to venture into one aspect of what lies ahead that I specifically wonder about:

Walker proposed that public employees pay 5.8% of their salaries toward their pensions and 12% of the cost of their health insurance coverage. While I wonder how that’s going to play out across the state, I especially wonder how it will play out in Milwaukee Public Schools.

Will the NLRB Change Its Position on Captive Audience Speeches?

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 20, 2011
Post category:Labor & Employment Law Legal Scholarship

This is the question that Paul Secunda considers in a new paper, “The Future of NLRB Doctrine on Captive Audience Speeches.” Under established doctrine, employers may require employees who are contemplating unionization to attend meetings at which speeches opposed to unionization are presented. However, the National Labor Relations Board has recently undergone some significant membership changes that could conceivably lead to reconsideration of the “captive audience” doctrine. Paul’s paper describes how this reconsideration might come about and discusses potential outcomes. His conclusion:

I believe the Board will likely not prohibit all captive audience meetings as I believe they could, and should, do under current law. Rather, the Board is likely to engage in a more restrained approach based on already-existing doctrines and cases given the Board’s desire to avoid the misimpression that it is merely engaging in politically-motivated flip-flopping.

Paul’s paper was part of a symposium at Indiana University-Bloomington on labor and employment law under the Obama Administration. The abstract appears after the jump.

Speech Rights of Public Employees: Contextualizing Garcetti

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:December 18, 2010
Post category:First Amendment Labor & Employment Law Legal Scholarship

Since its recognition of the right of public employees to speak on matters of public concern in Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968), the Supreme Court has proven less than generous in protecting that right. Of particular importance, the Supreme Court held in Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), that if employees speak pursuant to their official work duties, they are not speaking as “citizens,” and their speech enjoys no First Amendment protection. The holding thus substantially restricts constitutional safeguards for government whistleblowers.

Paul Secunda helpfully places Garcetti‘s formalism in a broader jurisprudential context in a new paper on SSRN, “Neoformalism and the Reemergence of the Rights/Privilege Distinction in Public Employment Law.”