NLRB's year-end decisions help employers start the new decade off right

It was a winning season for businesses, with employers garnering some big victories at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to round out 2019. In October, the Board released a decision enhancing employee privacy during union drives, which would have been a strange way to end the year for what is considered a pretty labor-friendly Board. Not to disappoint, it then closed out the year with a spate of employer-friendly decisions you'll want to know about.

It's almost poetic

Almost five years to the day after its initial decision, the NRLB has overruled Purple Communications, Inc. The 2014 ruling held employee use of company e-mail to discuss terms and conditions of employment—including organizing activity—must be permitted during nonworking time.

Reasonably, many employers were upset about their lack of control over what they considered to be their private property. The NLRB was persuaded by that logic, and as of December 17, 2019, that is no longer the status quo. The 2019 decision Caesars Entertainment overrules the previous stance by allowing employers to restrict employee e-mail use to certain purposes (i.e., work-related only), as long as they don't single out union-related communication.

There's an important exception to this holding in situations in which the employer's e-mail system furnishes the only reasonable means for employees to communicate with one another, but the NLRB cautioned this would apply only in rare circumstances.

The quickie election rule