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Law360 (October 2, 2020, 3:34 PM EDT ) The National Labor Relations Board has nearly cleared out its backlog of old cases as part of an effort to speed up its notoriously long timeline for resolving labor disputes, Chairman John Ring said Friday at a New York University School of Law legal conference.
Ring said the agency has decided 71 of its 73 oldest cases, defined as unfair labor practice and union election disputes that were pending for at least 18 months and 12 months, respectively, as of the close of fiscal year 2020 on Wednesday. The two aging cases the board has not resolved "are very close to the finish line," Ring added.
"We're extremely proud of what we accomplished," Ring said. "The board feels very strongly that one of the most important ways we can effectively carry out the [National Labor Relations] Act is by getting these cases out quickly."
The NLRB, which decides disputes tied from union organizing and collective bargaining, has long had a reputation for being slow to resolve cases, sometimes issuing decisions several years after unions or employers filed their initial charge. The agency's Trump-appointed leadership has sought to reverse this trend, setting a goal of cutting the time it takes to resolve disputes by a fifth. The agency is well on its way, Ring said Friday morning in his opening address at day two of NYU Law's 73rd annual labor law conference.
The agency's success at clearing out its oldest cases this year comes after it dramatically cut the average age of pending cases last year, Ring said, referencing data the agency touted last year.
The board issued 303 decisions in contested cases during fiscal year 2019. Adopting a case processing pilot program, the board committed itself to expediting cases in order to better serve the parties and the American public. Under the program, there was particular focus on issuing decisions in some of the oldest cases. As a result, the median age of all cases pending before the board was reduced from 233 days in fiscal year 2018 to 157 days at the end of fiscal year 2019, an almost 33% reduction.
"Each board member has committed to a relentless focus on moving cases," Ring said. The agency did not clear out its full backlog of old cases by Wednesday in part because board member Lauren McFerran — the panel's lone Democrat — has penned dissents since retaking her seat in August, Ring said.
"She was very on board with our goals and worked hard to get to as many cases as she could," he said.
Ring also discussed the agency's ongoing efforts to revise certain federal labor policies via rulemaking, which represents a departure from the agency's typical practice of setting new standards through case law. In contrast to adjudication, rulemaking allows the board to issue clearer broader standards with more stakeholder input, as the process typically requires agencies to solicit public comment on their proposals, Ring said.
So far, the board has finalized rules adjusting various facets of the union election and certification process and setting out a new standard for evaluating whether linked businesses are joint employers of the same workers under the NLRA. The board has also proposed rules limiting unions' access to worker contact information and make college teaching assistants ineligible to form unions. The window for public comment on the contact rule closed Monday, and the board stopped taking comment on the student rule in February. The board does not have a timetable for finalizing the student rule, Ring said.
"We received a lot of comments — many comments — and the board is in the process of reviewing all those comments," he said.
Ring's comments at the conference came a day after addresses by Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission member Charlotte Burrows. Craig Leen, director of the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, spoke later Friday.
--Additional reporting by Vin Gurrieri and Anne Cullen. Editing by Stephen Berg.
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