“I’m sorry-it’s early in the morning-I just simply don’t understand that,” Parker said. “You have no ongoing negotiations that are interfered with.”īut that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any interference with areas Congress intended to leave for collective bargaining, Peterson said. “You have no collective bargaining agreement here,” Parker interjected. The Supreme Court made clear, Peterson replied, that state attempts to influence the substantive terms of union contracts clash with the federal regulatory scheme for labor relations. “Because they all, in one form or another, can impact what is up for grabs in a collective bargaining process.” Enough for Preemption?Ī law triggers Machinists preemption if it frustrates collective bargaining “and this doesn’t appear to get to that level,” said Judge Rosemary Pooler, a Clinton appointee. “It seems your argument is shredding a whole body of New York labor law,” said the judge, a George W. New York City has legislated many labor rules that employers must follow, Judge Barrington Parker said during oral argument. Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, said the restaurant groups’ lawyer, William Peterson of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP. New York City’s just-cause law took protections often found in union contracts off the negotiating table, such that it interferes with the collective bargaining process and is thus preempted by federal labor law under the US Supreme Court’s 1976 decision in Machinists v. That model is the default for workplaces in every state but Montana. The law creates an exception to the at-will employment doctrine permitting employers to fire workers for any legal reason. It also contains other requirements, including the establishment of a progressive discipline system.
The measure, which applies to fast-food chains with at least 30 locations nationally, prohibits firing workers absent unsatisfactory job performance or misconduct on the worker’s part, or an actual economic reason for the company.
The lawyer for the Restaurant Law Center-an affiliate of the National Restaurant Association-and the New York State Restaurant Association faced a barrage of skeptical questions during oral argument Thursday at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.Ī ruling that upholds New York City’s fast-food worker discharge law could support efforts to extend its protections to all workers in the city and to enact similar protections elsewhere. A federal appeals court seemed likely to reject a restaurant industry challenge to New York City’s just-cause protections for fast-food workers.
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