BLUE DOG DEM TO LABOR BOARD: ‘Do No Harm to Those Job Creators,’ Repeal Obama-Era Rule.

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) joined Republican lawmakers in support of a bill that would reverse a decision made by the National Labor Relations Board during the Obama administration.

“For more than three decades, the Joint Employer Standard was the cornerstone of labor law; it protected businesses from undue liability involving employees over which they did not have the actual or the direct control. We know what happened in August of 2015 that decision that came out – that decision ignored years of legal precedent and created an environment of uncertainty that will put pressure on primary companies to assert more authority over their contracted small businesses and franchises to limit new potential liability under this federal law,” Cuellar said during a Capitol Hill press conference Thursday.

“I’m an attorney and I’ve been a small-business owner, so I know what it is to be a small-business owner, so I know what it is to work with employees, and I don’t think this is a Democratic or Republican issue – it’s something that we’ve got to do because it’s the right thing to do for the small-business owners,” he added.

In August 2015, the NLRB concluded that “two or more entities are joint employers of a single workforce if (1) they are both employers within the meaning of the common law; and (2) they share or codetermine those matters governing the essential terms and conditions of employment.”

This was a blatant act by the NLRB to enforce what I call the “Caligula Standard” on corporate/franchisee relations: “If only all of Rome had just one neck.”