Employment/Labor Law

“If the NLRB is not functioning as Congress intended, as it hasn’t since January, then the NLRA cannot constitutionally preempt state law,” said UC Berkeley Law Professor Catherine Fisk.

Former acting Labor Secretary Julie Su will be a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she will focus her work at the university’s Center for Law and Work.

“AB 288 protects fundamental constitutional rights of Californians at a time when the federal government is failing,” writes Professor Catherine Fisk and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “It is a commonsense measure that builds on the established practice enabling unions and employers to come together under a stable and predictable set of rules to bargain collectively.”

Professor Diana Reddy weighs in on the attack on the labor movement.

Arbitration is commonly understood to favor employers over employees, but “an arbitrator cannot violate the law,” said Catherine Fisk of UC Berkeley’s Law School, where she teaches employment and labor law. 

“When employees have job rights, as most federal employees do, they cannot be summarily fired without cause.” Catherine Fisk of UC Berkeley’s Law School wrote KQED. “Most federal civilian employees are protected by civil service laws that require the government to have just cause and to follow fair procedure to terminate them. That is true even when the government seeks to lay off employees for reasons of cost.”

Professor Diana Reddy weighs in on challenges by corporations and Trump to the legal structure of the National Labor Relations Board.

Professor Diana Reddy weighs in on whether or not the N.L.R.B. and its underlying statute is doomed.

Professor Catherine Fisk weighs in on Governor Gavin Newsom’s return to the office directive for public employees. 

UC Berkeley School of Law professor Catherine Fisk said that an employer’s intention when reviewing an employee’s email is key to determining whether a violation has occurred. If an employer reviewed a staffer’s email while they were on vacation to offload work to someone else, Fisk said, that type of search may be justified. But searching an employee’s email simply to surveil them probably would not be, she said.