Successorship Obligations
Files
Description
Professor Estreicher compares successorship doctrine with the “single employer,” “alter ego,” and “contract bar” doctrines. He describes successorship in terms of the “Wiley-Bums-Howard Johnson triad,” and concludes .that the basic test for successorship status is “substantial continuity of identity in the business enterprise,” with the most significant factor being the extent to which the predecessor's personnel have been retained in the composition of the new work force. The Supreme Court's decisions in this area thus create powerful incentives on the purchaser's part to refuse to hire the seller's union-represented workers, notwithstanding formal labor law principles which bar antiunion discrimination in hiring. The author considers in detail the seller's obligations under various forms of successorship clauses, and explores the availability of arbitral relief and temporary judicial relief in the nature of “reverse Boys Market injunctions.” . . . The Labor Board's successorship doctrine is of enormous importance in today's world of rapid capital transfers, plant shutdowns, and abrogable collective-bargaining contracts. The following remarks offer not so much a full-scale critical perspective on this area of labor law, but an attempt to identify and assess the key practical issues that confront buyers and sellers of businesses, as well as unions and their members.
Source Publication
Labor Law and Business Change: Theoretical and Transactional Perspectives
Source Editors/Authors
Samuel Estreicher, Daniel G. Collins
Publication Date
1988
Recommended Citation
Estreicher, Samuel, "Successorship Obligations" (1988). Faculty Chapters. 1123.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1123
