There were two decisions issued recently by federal appeals courts in cases involving employee labor law rights that we wanted to bring to your attention.
In the first, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Georgia-Pacific Consumer Operations, LLC v. United Steelworkers Union, No. 20-10646 (11th Cir. November 20, 2020), reinstated an arbitrator’s decision finding that an employer had violated a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) when it terminated an employee for testing positive for opiates after a random drug screening. The arbitrator determined that the agreement’s “just cause” standard wasn’t met due to the employee’s innocent explanation for why he tested positive, and the CBA itself did not clearly provide the employer the right to terminate the employee.
In the second case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Bob’s Tire Co. v. NLRB, No. 19-1174 (D.C. Cir. November 20, 2020), found that that an employer violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) when it failed to bargain with the union over the hiring of temporary workers through a staffing agency to do substantially similar work to that of the employees in the bargaining unit.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.