For more than 70 years, employers have had the right to convene "captive audience" meetings with employees about their statutory labor rights, including the right to refrain from forming unions. On April 7, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo announced in a memo that she will ask the NLRB to find such mandatory meetings unlawful.
Thomas Payne, an attorney with Barnes & Thornburg in Indianapolis, described the memo as "a thinly veiled attempt to make organizing easier for unions by taking away a tool that employers have to make sure employees are fully informed of their rights and how the organizing process works."
"To succeed," he added, "Abruzzo will have to convince a board majority to ignore decades of precedent."
Captive audience meetings can serve as a proper counterbalance to arguments advanced by organized labor outside the workforce and sometimes within employee homes, which are generally off-limits to employers in this context, noted Reyburn Lominack III, an attorney with Fisher Phillips in Columbia, S.C. "Because the employer is generally paying employees for their time during such meetings, they have long been recognized as a lawful extension of free-speech rights in the absence of improper statements or conduct," he said.
Topics Covered
Thomas Servodidio, an attorney with Duane Morris in Philadelphia, said captive audience meetings allow employers the opportunity to educate employees about such topics as:
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