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By Knight Kiplinger

The Kiplinger Washington Editors

Sept. 5, 2008

U.S. Agriculture
Feeding the Economy

As fall harvests approach, agriculture is poised for another year of high prices, big sales and record income. This week's Kiplinger Letter looks at how much crop and livestock production is contributing to the U.S. economy.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: The Economy, Energy, Auto Industry, Human Resources, Taxes, The World, Politics and Housing.

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NLRB Switches Positions in Key Areas

The NLRB sided with employers and reversed precedent in four key cases that involved back pay, striker replacement and union relations.

Worth Reading: The Quick Take from Kiplinger

March 2008

Kathryn M. Davis

Morrison & Foerster

Kathryn M. Davis is an associate in the Walnut Creek, Calif., office of Morrison & Foerster LLP, where she is a member of the firm's Employment and Labor Practice Group. Ms. Davis represents employers in all aspects of labor and employment law, including actions in state and federal court and before administrative agencies.
Morrison & Foerster has more than a thousand lawyers in 18 offices around the world and has expertise in finance, employment law, life sciences, and technology, litigation and in the Pacific Rim.

The Republican-controlled National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has made life easier for employers when it comes to rules for dealing with unions, determining back pay and permanently replacing striking workers. And in the four cases involved, they reversed existing precedent.

"This last year in particular serves as a reminder of how much can change as a result of a presidential election," Morrison & Foerster labor attorney Kathryn Davis writes in a legal analysis. Given how drastically the political make-up of the board can influence NLRB policy, Davis writes that the four new precedents -- and other pro-employer decisions in recent years -- might not last long if a Democrat is elected president.

The four cases Davis examines make it easier for employers to:

• Seek a decertification election of a union shortly after it voluntarily recognizes that union.

• Reduce the amount of back pay it may owe workers for labor act violations by making the employees and NLRB officials bear the burden of showing that the worker had been actively seeking new employment.

• Permanently replace striking workers by loosening the interpretation of the terms replacement workers are originally hired under.

• Bar discrimination claims by unions when non-labor related groups are allowed to use an employer e-mail system.

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