A week after a House subcommittee
held a hearing on the National Labor Relations Board's new
joint employer standard, it was the Senate's turn to address
the aftermath of the Board's Browning-Ferris
decision. In Browning-Ferris, the Board created a
two-part test for determining joint employment for liability
purposes under the National Labor Relations Act. Under this new
standard, demonstrating an entity's "indirect
control" or even its "unexercised potential to
control" another entity's employees could establish joint
employment.
Soon after the Board issued this decision, lawmakers in both
Houses of Congress introduced the Protecting Local Business
Opportunity Act (H.R. 3459, S. 2015). According to Sen. Lamar
Alexander (R-TN), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions and chief sponsor of the Senate bill,
this legislation would "roll back the NLRB's ruling and
reaffirm that an employer must have actual, direct and immediate
control
