A federal Court of Appeals has ruled that the NLRB cannot abruptly change its definition of joint employment without sufficient explanation. This decision (the CNN case) rebukes the NLRB for its initial attempt, in 2014, to expand the definition of joint employment.

This decision does not, however, address the Browning-Ferris case that followed in 2015, in which the Board similarly expanded the definition of joint employment but, that time, with an expansive explanation and justification for doing so. Browning-Ferris in on appeal too.

Here’s what happened.

Back in the good old days, when TV was pure and the world had not yet been exposed to Janet Jackson’s halftime nipple, CNN used to contract with an outside company who supplied technicians for its TV production. CNN’s camera operators, sound technicians, and broadcast engineers were employees of a third party, and they were represented by a union.

In late 2003, just a few months before that fateful Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction, CNN decided to bring that work in house. It set up a hiring and interview process and then directly hired its own technicians, severing its ties with the third party.

That made the union mad.

The union claimed the decision was motivated by anti-union animus and filed an unfair labor practice charge. The NLRB ultimately agreed with the union, determined that CNN was a joint employer of the third party technicians, and therefore had to respect the union status of the technicians. CNN could not hit the reset button without bargaining.

There was more to the decision too, with findings of anti-union statements by supervisors and a question about whether CNN was a successor employer (which is not the same thing as being a joint employer), but for our purposes, let’s focus on the joint employment piece.

Before the Board’s CNN decision, the legal standard for joint employment under the NLRB (remember, different laws have different standards) required “direct and immediate control.” In the CNN decision, the Board inexplicably abandoned that standard and ruled that two separate entities are joint employers of a single workforce if they “share or codetermine those matters governing the essential terms and conditions of employment.”

“Share or codetermine” is much looser than “direct and immediate control.” Think of your teenage children. You may try to “share and codetermine” whether they have a party at your house when you are out of town on business, but you have no “direct and immediate control” over the matter. At least not while it happens. (Purely hypothetical. My kids didn’t do this. Kids, if you are reading, DON’T do this!)

This case has been crawling through the courts for years, but finally last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the NLRB could not simply switch the test without explaining itself. On that basis alone, the Court rejected the conclusion that CNN was a joint employer of the third party technicians.

So what does this mean for Browning-Ferris and the vastly expanded definition of joint employment that the Board instituted in that case?  Unfortunately, nothing.

In contrast to the CNN case, the Board’s Browning-Ferris decision included a lengthy and expansive discussion of the joint employer standard and why the Board — like in Sympathy for the Devil, “saw it was a time for a change.”

The Browning-Ferris case is also on appeal in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (the same appellate court that just issued this decision) but will be heard by a different panel of three judges. A decision in that case is expected in the next several months.

For now, the Browning-Ferris standard — that indirect control is enough to demonstrate joint employment — remains the standard used by the NLRB.

© 2017 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.