Sunday, March 14, 2010

Follow Up: Will Tesco's Fresh & Easy Appeal Judge's-NRLB Ruling it Violated U.S. Labor Relations Act?


On March 4, 2010, we broke the news that Federal Administrative Law Judge Gregory Z. Meyerson ruled that Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market violated a section of the U.S. Labor Relations Act involving a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against the grocery chain by a former Las Vegas Fresh & Easy store employee and the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union.

See our March 4, 2010 story: Aministrative Law Judge Finds Tesco's Fresh & Easy Violated Labor Relations Act in Ex-Store Employee, UFCW Union Complaint.

The judge ruled that Fresh & Easy violated one section named in the complaint.

He found Fresh & Easy to be in violation of interfering with store employees legal right and ability to organize or join an organized labor organization, in this particular case the UFCW union.
In his ruling, Judge Meyerson ordered Fresh & Easy to stop using certain specific means to prevent employees from distributing UFCW union literature at the stores and to stop visiting store workers at home and questioning them about their communications and meetings with union representatives

Following the publication of our March 4 story, on March 8 the supermarket industry trade publication Supermarket News published this news item in which it said Tesco's Fresh & Easy (evidently a spokesperson) told the publication it plans to appeal the judge's ruling, which as we noted in our March 4 report is something the grocery chain has the right to do under law.

As of Friday, March 12, Tesco's Fresh & Easy hadn't filed an appeal, according to information we obtained from the National Labor Relations Board. The grocery chain still has ample time to appeal though if it decides to do so.

No comments: