Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), this week introduced The Protecting Local Business Opportunity Act. The bill has 36 original cosponsors and would reverse the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) August 27 decision that a company can be the joint employer of workers provided by another organization, as long as both companies share or co-determine matters governing the essential terms and conditions of employment.
The Senate bill would also affirm that an employer must have “actual, direct and immediate” control over an employee to be considered a joint employer.
Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA), chairman of the Senate HELP subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety, said that the NLRB’s decision bypasses decades of established law. “Changing the joint-employer standard will impede franchising by taking away the benefits of a small entrepreneur being able to start a small business and grow it using a brand name that was established by a major corporation. If you take away incentives for corporations to franchise, the results will be similar to what we have already seen in so many oversteps by the Obama administration and the NLRB: making the big guys bigger and putting the small guys out of business. Instead, this administration should be focusing on how to create more opportunities for small businesses to grow.”
Both the House and Senate’s fiscal year 2016 budget proposals for the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services include a rider that would block the NLRB from changing its definition of a joint employer, but those bills appear highly unlikely to pass.
