Employers are no longer categorically allowed to tell workers that unionization will negatively impact their relationship with management, a split National Labor Relations Board ruled, overturning a nearly 40-year-old precedent in a case against Starbucks Corp.

The coffee giant made a series of illegal threats to its workers during a union election drive at its Seattle Roastery, the board ruled Friday. It’s the latest in a series of board decisions against Starbucks as the company and union work toward a framework for bargaining at over 500 cafes nationwide.

But the board’s Democratic majority cleared Starbucks of charges that it illegally told workers to vote against joining a union if they wanted to maintain direct communication with their managers.

In doing so, it nevertheless altered the standard for determining the legality of these statements going forward—tossing the NLRB’s 1985 ruling in Tri-Cast Inc., which said “there is no threat, either explicit or implicit,” in explaining to workers that organizing changes their dynamic with the company.

That ruling “erred in deeming categorically lawful nearly any employer statement to employees touching on the impact that unionization would have on the relationship between individual employees and their employer,” the board said in its first precedential ruling since the nation voted to send former President Donald...

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