A recent D.C. Circuit decision, Oncor Electric Delivery Company LLC v. NLRB, shrinks the protections the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) provides to workers by misreading a Supreme Court opinion regarding statements by workers that disparage their employer’s product. The decision allowed Oncor to fire the lead negotiator for its technician’s union for his testimony before the state legislature. The D.C. Circuit panel relied on a 1953 Supreme Court opinion, NLRB v. Local Union No. 1229, Int’l. Bhd. of Electric Workers, a case generally referred to as Jefferson Standard, the name of the employer in that case. And while Jefferson Standard was a poorly reasoned opinion that has not aged well, nothing in Jefferson Standard required the D.C. Circuit to take such a narrow view of the protections the NLRA provides to workers.
Jefferson Standard arose out of efforts by technicians at a local television station in Charlotte, North Carolina to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. The technicians’ informational picketing seemed to have little effect on the company, so some of the technicians tried a new strategy. They printed up thousands of leaflets criticizing the company for only presenting programs that were filmed elsewhere rather than broadcasting any local programming. The leaflets were signed “WBT Technicians,” but they made no mention of the contract dispute. The company fired the workers who were responsible for the leaflet, and the case made its way to the...
Russian military command has been lying for the fifth month in a row about battlefield “successes,” claiming that Russian forces are advancing west of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region. However, this...