A new Act Now Advisory will be of interest to many of our readers in the retail industry: “Union Organizing at Retail and Food Service Businesses Gets Boost from New York City ‘Labor Peace’ Executive Order,” by our colleagues Allen B. Roberts, Steven M. Swirsky, Donald S. Krueger, and Kristopher D. Reichardt from Epstein Becker Green.
Following is an excerpt:
New York City retail and food service unions got a boost recently when Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an Executive Order titled “Labor Peace for Retail Establishments at City Development Projects.” Subject to some thresholds for the size and type of project and the amount of “Financial Assistance” received for a “City Development Project,” Executive Order No. 19 mandates that developers agree to a “labor peace clause.” In turn, the labor peace clause will compel the developer to require certain large retail and food service tenants to enter into a “Labor Peace Agreement” prohibiting their opposition to a “Labor Organization” that seeks to represent their employees. …
If the objective of the Executive Order is to assure labor peace by way of insulation from picketing, work stoppages, boycotts, or other economic interference, it is not clear how its selective targeting of retail and food service tenants occupying more than 15,000 square feet of space—and the exclusion of other tenants and union relations—delivers on its promise. There are multiple non-covered tenants and events that could occasion such on-site disruptions as picketing, work stoppages, off-site boycotts, or other economic interference.
As a threshold matter, there is no particular reason why a labor dispute with a tenant occupying space shy of 15,000 square feet—among them high-profile national businesses—somehow is less disruptive to the tranquility of a City Development Project than one directed at a tenant whose business model requires larger space.
Also, the Executive Order does not address the rights or responsibilities of either landlords or their tenants that are Covered Employers bound to accept a Labor Peace Agreement when faced with union demands for neutrality that go beyond the Executive Order’s “minimum” neutrality requirements. There could be a dispute over initial labor peace terms if a union, dissatisfied that the Executive Order’s Labor Peace Agreement secured only a Covered Employer’s “neutral posture” concerning representation efforts, were to protest to obtain more ambitious and advantageous commitments that are coveted objectives of union neutrality demands, such as …