Health Law Advisor

In Good Samaritan Medical Center v. National Labor Relations Board, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed the decision of the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) requiring a hospital in Massachusetts to rehire an employee it had terminated for violating the hospital’s general civility policy when he challenged a union representative during her presentation about union membership.    In reaching this decision, the First Circuit closely scrutinized the record and concluded that the NLRB overlooked substantial evidence revealing that the ...

The increased use of portable electronic devices in the workplace and the popularity of social media pose unique challenges for health care employers, particularly when the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) conflict with the NLRB’s position on policies that could infringe upon an employee’s right to engage in concerted activity under the NLRA.

HIPAA governs the use and disclosure of protected health information (“PHI”) by health care providers. HIPAA violations may occur when health care employees post ...

In recent years, unions representing employees in health care facilities have engaged in activities during contract negotiations to pressure employers into settling, while limiting the cost of engaging in strike activity in the form of lost wages to union employees. The two most common forms of such activity used by unions are informational picketing, and short, sometimes intermittent, strikes, usually lasting only a day or two.

Informational Picketing

Informational picketing is yet another issue on which the NLRB has recently overturned precedent, in this case favoring union ...

On January 5, 2015, less than one month after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) voted to adopt a Final Rule to amend its rules and procedures for representation elections, a lawsuit has been filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, asserting that the Board exceeded its authority under the National Labor Relations Act (Act) when it amended its rules for votes on union representation and that the new rule in unconstitutional and violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the US Constitution.

The suit was filed by the Chamber of Commerce of the United ...

On Epstein Becker Green’s OSHA Law Update blog, Eric Conn reviews the agreement between the NLRB and OSHA, which allows employees to file out-of-date safety related whistleblower claims to be filed with the NLRB.

Following is an excerpt from the blog post:

On May 21, 2014, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) published a memorandum discussing a new agreement between NLRB and OSHA regarding a backdoor route for employees to file safety related whistleblower claims that are too stale to be filed with OSHA. The NLRB memo directs OSHA representatives to “notify all complainants ...