New additions to employment/HR blogroll; case on forced wearing of union insignia

The field of active bloggers in our subject area keeps growing. And so far everyone has a bit of a different spin.

Together I think we are providing the employment law and HR community a lot of interesting and timely reading, which can be scanned very quickly using a newsreader, since pretty much everyone now has RSS feeds.

Added recently to the blogroll at right are two new entries:

The Employment Law Bulletin, described as “New developments in employment law along with other interesting legal/political tidbits,” by McKinney & Webster, P.C. of San Antonio, Texas. They say they represent both individuals and businesses in employment-related matters, though their website and some blog posts suggest they favor individuals a bit. Welcome aboard (they’ve been blogging since June, 2004 and I’m not sure how I ran across them and why it didn’t occur sooner).

I note that they thought as I did in choosing to post about Dr. King on Monday.

Also added is Labor Law Blog, described as “focus[ing] on traditional labor law (mostly NLRA, but also RLA and public sector labor law).” The anonymous author “plan[s] to describe recent cases, analyze them, and discuss their practical implications for unions and employers.”

One of the first posts is an interesting case summary that highlights a key concept of labor law: protected rights such as the right to organize, join a union, and strike, also include the converse — the right to refrain from such activities.

In the case described, this meant the right not to be forced to wear union insignia.

Much more common are cases in which employers seek to prohibit such displays; here the employer and union sought to compel all employees to wear the insignia on their uniforms.

Either way, employers and unions should tread carefully.