If your company operates in the United States, staying compliant with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regulations has become a challenge due to the recent updates that affect your company-union relationships. Without the right tools and labor union software, manually trying to keep up the pace with these rapid changes can lead to costly compliance gaps.
You may think, “We’ve always managed labor relations manually and it’s worked so far”. The truth is that without intelligent technology to help HR and legal teams collaborate, your company risks serious consequences, such as penalties and fines for lack of compliance with updated labor laws and regulations, unresolved grievances, escalation from inconsistent disciplinary actions and reputational damage.
To truly understand the current labor/legal market, we must recall the actions that the NLRB has taken in recent years, leading us to this turning point in labor relations.
What has changed in North American Labor Relations?
The withdrawal of 31 general counsel memos implemented by the Biden Administration, to say the least. This directly affects the company-union relationship. The problem is not only how much has changed, but how quickly these changes are happening. However, this is not a question of knowledge, because we’re confident that your HR and legal team are aware of these changes. The question relies on their ability to stay on top of these changes.
But how did it all begin? Under President Biden, the NLRB, led by General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, aggressively pursued pro-union policies, issuing “general counsel advice memos” which, for many, were seen as contradictory and put at risk labor law that had been settled for decades.
The result was a doubling of seekers for union representation and unfair labor practices that all types of companies had to face under a board that favored employees and pro-union rulings. We saw companies updating policies and training their HR and legal teams on labor relations like never before.
However, the current administration is taking a new approach to labor relations. Currently, three of the five members of the board of the NLRB, who are appointed by the president of the U.S.A. and confirmed by the Senate, are from the current president’s party, including the general counsel, William Cowen, who has been an employee and advisor to the board for a long time.
Citing The National Law Review, Cowen justified the basis for rescinding 31 previous general counsel memos implemented by the Biden Administration during its term, between 2021 and 2025, by issuing a memo where he declared: “…we have seen our backlog of cases grow to the point where it is no longer sustainable. The unfortunate truth is that if we attempt to accomplish everything, we risk accomplishing nothing.”
Rescinded memos have addressed a range of employee rights, including statutory protections for student-athletes, electronic monitoring, and non-compete agreements. Legal remedies like injunctive relief, settlement agreements and grievance resolution. Union activities, for example, captive audience meetings and immigrant worker protections.
The list of rescinded memos is:
- Statutory Rights of Players at Academic Institutions (Student-Athletes) Under the National Labor Relations Act
- Electronic Monitoring and Algorithmic Management of Employees Interfering with the Exercise of Section 7 Rights
- Non-Compete Agreements that Violate the National Labor Relations Act
- Remedying the Harmful Effects of Non-Compete and “Stay-or-Pay” Provisions that Violate the National Labor Relations Act
- Securing Full Remedies for All Victims of Unlawful Conduct
- Ensuring Settlement Agreements Adequately Address the Public Rights at Issue in the Underlying Unfair Labor Practice Allegations
- Section 10(j) Injunctive Relief
- Guidance on the Propriety of Mail Ballot Elections
- The Right to Refrain from Captive Audience and Other Mandatory Meetings
- Ensuring Rights and Remedies for Immigrant Workers Under the NLRA
- Goals for Initial Unfair Labor Practice Investigations
Notably, not all these decisions are final, as some are governed by the NLRB, not just the general counsel memos. This means companies must stay vigilant and continuously monitor for final rulings that could impact labor relations policies.
With these changes underway, companies must adapt quickly or risk falling out of compliance.
How does Labor Union Software help your company with the new U.S.A. Labor Relations updates?
While these changes are being processed as part of the new strategy for the NLRB, union activities will continue. Therefore, it’s a mistake if you think that your company doesn’t need to be concerned about union activity and how to respond to it.
You may be wondering how to keep up and ensure compliance. With the use of the right technology — Labor union software to help your company effortlessly manage labor relations, such as the Sodales Employee & Labor Relations Platform.
With our platform, your HR and legal teams work together to manage all your labor relations in one place:
- Simplify grievances, claims, arbitration and CBA with automated timelines and processes integrated directly from your contracts to ensure consistency with union agreements.
- Track and resolve individual, group and policy grievances in one place with smart automation tools that auto-generate the steps to take and involve all the parties along the process to prevent escalations.
- Simplify internal job postings by automatically calculating and ranking bids by seniority requirements and generating award letters with templates.
- Simplify high-volume job movements and automate job posting statuses.
- Manage employees’ conduct and maintain consistency along the disciplinary process, from creation and tracking to the resolution of disciplinary cases.
- Develop configurable workflows to track disciplinary steps according to your policies, procedures and respective union agreements.
- Support fair, transparent and compliant working practices while managing complaints with a unified process.
- Efficiently capture, investigate and resolve complaints aligned with policies and legal requirements.
- Classify cases by type and automatically escalate only to the right stakeholders along the process to resolution.
With this type of labor union software, you can update the agreements by article in real time and notify all parties involved as the NLRB makes new updates. Automatically modify the process to align with the new policies and procedures.
This not only ensures higher compliance but also enables your HR and legal teams to engage in self-sufficient collaboration to better manage labor relations.
In our experience, staying compliant requires more than just understanding the changes in regulations; it demands the use of technology. With labor union software like Sodales’ Employee & Labor Relations Platform, your HR and legal teams can automate complex processes and adapt quickly to policy changes.
Don’t wait until non-compliance costs you more than money. Schedule a demo today to see how Sodales can empower your team to adapt faster to NLRB Updates.
