NLRB Order To Hire Laid-Off TVS Workers is 'Radical,' CNN Says
The National Labor Relations Board's "radical" argument of discrimination by CNN is "the only means of justifying the radical remedies it ordered" in 2015 when the NLRB said more than 100 laid-off Team Video Services technical workers should be hired…
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by CNN, the cable programmer said in a reply brief (in Pacer) Friday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit as part of its cross-petition for review of that 2015 order (see 1604110021). In its brief, CNN argued it wasn't a joint employer of the unionized workers TVS laid off and didn't have direct and immediate control of them, since TVS did the hiring and firing and CNN's determining the number of employees needed didn't make it a joint employer. It said the NLRB finding that CNN was a successor employer to TVS was arbitrary and capricious, with the Communications Workers of America -- which represented the laid-off workers -- "not even attempt[ing] to defend that ruling" and NLRB arguments along those lines lacking merit. And it said CNN could be found guilty of discrimination against former TVS technicians only if it could be shown it failed to hire them when it brought in house technical work at its New York and District of Columbia news organizations as a means of avoiding a collective bargaining obligation. That former TVS technicians were more likely to be offered jobs than average applicants, while TVS union leaders were even more likely, and CNN hired the majority of TVS workforces in New York and D.C. points to conduct "flatly inconsistent with any hiring plan ... 'designed to avoid' a union bargaining obligation," CNN said. NLRB didn't comment Tuesday. The case hasn't been scheduled for oral argument.