October 27th, 2015
Coalition to Save Local Businesses Details Real Impact of the NLRB’s Controversial Joint-Employer Standard
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jenna Weisbord, 310-995-0839
jweisbord@franchise.org
Coalition to Save Local Businesses Details Real Impact of the NLRB’s Controversial Joint-Employer Standard
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27—In advance of the U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee mark-up on HR 3459, Protecting Local Business Opportunity Act (PLBOA), the Coalition to Save Local Businesses (CSLB) is educating policymakers on the real-world impact the NLRB’s new joint employer ruling has millions of local businesses. The CSLB released a new document setting the record straight on false rhetoric that has been pushed following the creation of a new standard in federal labor law.
“The NLRB has enacted a new joint employer standard impacting family owned businesses in every community in America without congressional approval,” stated Executive Director of the CSLB Michael Layman. “Grasping to a meaningless advice memorandum in the Freshii case or creating false illusions that Browning Ferris Industries (BFI) was an isolated situation that will not impact the future of small business ownership is wrong and factually incorrect.”
As written in the NLRB’s majority in their BFI decision, the NLRB is poised to broadly apply the BFI standard moving forward: “(W)e have decided to restate the Board’s legal standard for joint-employer determinations and make clear how that standard is to be applied going forward (page 15, BFI decision).” Employers have no clarity as to where the line will be drawn moving forward.
In the aftermath of the NLRB’s decision, lawmakers have attacked the credibility of small business owners while claiming new legislation is simply a way to hide an “anti-worker agenda” in annual funding bills and prevent workers from being able to collectively bargain. “HR 3459/S.2015 (Protecting Local Business Opportunity Act) will solely restore a long held standard that small businesses relied upon and enabled our industry to be successful,” Layman said. “Nothing in the bill changes employee collective bargaining rights provided by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). If policy makers want to change the law, they should run them through congress, not through the regulatory process.”
While the House of Representatives will take a significant step forward this week to protecting small business owners, it’s important to first separate the common myths from the facts and for all members of Congress to examine the realistic impact this decision has on their local business constituents.
Get the facts here.
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The Coalition to Save Local Businesses represents thousands of local businesses and millions of American jobs through its membership and partner organizations. The coalition’s goal is to inform Members of Congress and others about the negative consequences decisions by the National Labor Relations Board to expand the definition of who can be held as a joint employer would have on local businesses and their employees across the country. The coalition is asking Congress to support legislation that would make permanent the long-standing and widely accepted definition of joint employer.