Advocates for Labor and Progressive Institutions
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed in its entirety a jury verdict in favor of SEIU and one of its largest local unions, SEIU – United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), against the former leaders of SEIU-UHW and a rival union created by those former leaders.
On February 19, 2013, the three-member arbitration panel established to determine the terms of the 2011 National Agreement between the National Postal Mail Handlers Union and the U.S. Postal Service released its Award. The Award fully protects the jobs and careers and living standards of all 42,000 career mail handlers now employed by the Postal Service. After a two-year wage freeze, it restores, starting in November 2013 and continuing through May 2016, the historic pattern of annual general wage increases and semi-annual cost-of-living adjustments for all current mail handlers. Attorneys from Bredhoff & Kaiser assisted with the contract negotiations and presented the Union’s case in the interest arbitration.
In a decision affecting more than 30,000 retirees of Navistar International Corporation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio that Navistar improperly shifted the retirees’ prescription drug coverage from the plan provided under a 1993 consent decree to a Medicare Part D Plan that covered fewer drugs at substantially greater cost to the retirees.
The Building Trades Department of the AFL-CIO and several union officials have succeeded in obtaining a complete dismissal, on the merits, of all claims in a suit filed against them in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and its affiliates, prevailed in their legal challenge to legislation that purported to restrict their right to engage in spending in connection with the November 2012 election.
The Maryland Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, recently upheld the right of Montgomery County Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 35, to grieve the County’s unilateral rejection of a twenty-year practice allowing Lodge 35’s trainee shop stewards to observe officer interrogations for training purposes.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York recently dismissed an effort by Hostess Brands, Inc., filed under Section 1113 of the Bankruptcy Code, to reject its collective bargaining agreements with several local unions affiliated with the Bakery Confectionery Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union.
Nineteen U.S. Senators, with the assistance of Bredhoff & Kaiser, have filed an amicus brief in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in support of new regulations imposed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”).
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin recently ruled on a challenge brought by a coalition of seven unions, for which Bredhoff & Kaiser served as lead counsel. The court struck down on equal protection and First Amendment grounds two important provisions of Wisconsin Act 10, the widely publicized antiunion statute sponsored by Governor Scott Walker in 2011, a requirement for annual recertification by an absolute majority of union members and a prohibition on the voluntary withholding of union dues from a general employee’s paycheck.