Samuel Estreicher's article prompts reforms by National Labor Relations Board general counsel

Samuel EstreicherAn article by Samuel Estreicher, Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law and director of NYU's Center for Labor and Employment Law, in the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law has prompted the enforcement arm of the National Labor Relations Board to change the way it responds to the firing of workers attempting to organize unions.
 
In outlining his new initiative to expedite the processing of preliminary injunctions against employers who discharge employees for supporting unions, Lafe Solomon, acting general counsel of the NLRB, credited Estreicher's article with inspiring the changes by targeting areas for administrative reform at the agency short of amending the labor laws. Estreicher's 2004-08 statistics showed an average of 334 days between the filing of a charge and the filing of court papers seeking an injunction.
 
“That is much too long,” Solomon said in the Daily Labor Report, “so we've redesigned the process to try to remove the obstacles along the way.”
 
Estreicher has long urged the NLRB to improve its internal processes so that "it does a better of job of performing its basic functions, reinstating employees who have been discriminated against and holding prompt elections to decide union majority support," he said.
 
The Daily Labor Report also recently reported on Preston Pugh '97, an advisory board member of the Center for Labor and Employment Law, who has been appointed consent decree monitor of a settlement between the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and trucking firm YRC Inc. The case involved allegations of racial harassment and discrimination by a group of current and former African American employees.

Posted on October 15, 2010