Labor Board Shifts Tone on Joint Employer Rule in Court (1)

The National Labor Relations Board July 3 took a more cautious tone in a federal court hearing about its plans to issue a rule on the controversial joint employment issue.

Board Chairman John Ring (R) has said the agency will release a proposal for a regulation to clarify joint employer liability for multiple businesses this summer. But NLRB attorney Ruth Burdick told a federal appeals court that the court shouldn’t wait for that to happen before ruling on an ongoing case testing the limits of when one business can be considered a joint employer of another’s workers.

Burdick observed that ...