The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has adopted a new standard for evaluating challenges to employer work rules as facially unlawful under Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), overruling a decision from 2017.
Employers have witnessed the standard change several times over the last few years.
In 2017, the NLRB considered the Boeing Company’s policy restricting the use of camera-enabled devices (such as cellphones) on its property. An administrative law judge (ALJ) applied the test set forth in 2004’s Lutheran Heritage Village-Livonia and determined that employees would “reasonably construe” the rule to prohibit Section 7 activity, striking it down.
Boeing appealed and the NLRB reversed, tossing out the Lutheran Heritage standard and adopting a new rule.
“The judge’s decision in this case exposes fundamental problems with the Board’s application of Lutheran Heritage when evaluating the maintenance of work rules, policies and employee handbook provisions,” the NLRB majority wrote in Boeing Co. “We have decided to overrule the Lutheran Heritage ‘reasonably construe’ standard. The Board will no longer find unlawful the mere maintenance of facially neutral employment policies, work rules and handbook provisions based on a single inquiry, which made legality turn on whether an employee ‘would reasonably construe’ a rule to prohibit some type of potential Section 7 activity that might (or might not) occur in the future.”
A few years later, the issue...
By Cristina Lazo Source: SBS Canberra- based aircraft engineer Paulo Paniel acquired a thirty- year-old towbar business in 2018, which challenged him to implement systems - such as photo documenta...