NLRB seeks wholesale reversals of existing law

When National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel (GC) Jennifer Abruzzo took office, she issued official memoranda identifying the existing precedents she wanted to modify or reverse and ordered the Regional Directors to find cases that would give her and the Democratic Board the opportunity to achieve those goals. The plan is now fully operative. In a case growing from the efforts to unionize Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse (Amazon.com Services, Inc., N.L.R.B., Case 29-CA-280153), the GC filed a brief urging the Board to strike down no fewer than four Board precedents, one dating from the 1940’s and one not even one year old. The sweeping nature of the GC’s efforts is made clear in the brief, which sets aside a number of findings in the administrative law judge’s (ALJ) decision—which was based on existing law.

Employer speech at issue
The most controversial of the GC’s positions attacks an employer’s ability to present its views during a union campaign. The preeminent effort is to ban all mandatory employee meetings at which an employer can present its position.
Characterized as “captive audience” meetings, these meetings have been permitted since the 1948 Board decision in Babcock & Wilcox. The rationale supporting such meetings include the First Amendment rights of the employer and the specific protections of Section 8(c) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which states that employer communications “shall not constitute or be evidence of an unfair labor practice” so long as they don’t contain threats of reprisals, threats of force, or promises of benefit.