NLRB on a crusade to support union organizing

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has repeatedly made it clear it will try to turn back the clock on Board law by a generation or two. In recent statements, filings, and administrative decisions, the NLRB has left no doubt it is working toward reviving a labor law that existed decades ago in an overt attempt to support union organizing and create union victories.

Employers silenced and elections preempted?

Perhaps the two most controversial recent positions taken by NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo would make so-called “captive audience” speeches an unfair labor practice without specific employee approval and reinstate the Board’s authority to issue union recognition and bargaining orders based solely on authorization cards, bypassing a secret-ballot election entirely.

Captive audience meetings.Currently, during an organizing campaign, an employer is legally permitted to require employees—while “on the clock”—to attend meetings to hear the employer’s position. In a sweeping brief filed in Chemex Constr. Materials,however, Abruzzo asserted such speeches are inherently coercive and a violation of the employees’ Section 7 rights.

In Babcock & Wilcox Co.,77 NLRB 577, 578 (1948), the NLRB had found mandatory meetings in which the employer urged employees to reject union representation to be permissible under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).