This article will address the ongoing areas in which administrative leadership is moving substantive enforcement changes in core areas of labor law focusing on how Board procedures facilitate such changes. We will discuss shifts in the prosecution of cases by the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board in injunction cases and collaborative enforcement with other federal agencies as well as a number of substantive areas.
The significance of involvement of the NLRB in a classification analysis of independent contractor status is both complex and subtle. In traditional civil labor law, states and courts as well as the United States Department of Labor have evolved tests that focus, within different degrees of emphasis on status. These range from a multi-factor test that evaluates the degree to which a worker operates as a self-sufficient business complying with state laws that regulate the work. This has been an approach common in the trucking and intermodal world, buttressed by state licensing and insurance requirements, particular for owner operators in the brokerage industry.