Input Stories

Requiring workers to attend so-called “captive audience” meetings at which an employer expresses its views on union participation is illegal, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled (Bloomberg Law). 
 
What’s going on: Mandating employees’ presence at such meetings “violates federal labor law protections that allow workers to freely choose whether, when and how to participate in a debate about union representation—including refraining from doing so, the NLRB’s Democratic majority held in its Wednesday ruling.”   

• The decision—which overturns the board’s ruling in a 1948 case—follows an earlier decision to overrule the 1985 Tri-Cast standard, which had allowed employers to tell their employees that unionization would harm worker–manager relationships, as long as they did not use threats to do so.  

What it means: “Employers may hold meetings to share their views on unions only if they alert workers to the subject in advance, make it voluntary to attend with no consequences for missing and do not take attendance, the majority said” (Law360, subscription). 

• However, the new prohibition on these meetings “will apply prospectively only, to accommodate the reliance that employers may have put on the 76-year-old precedent that it struck down” (Bloomberg Law). 

Yes, but … The “win may be fleeting as the incoming Trump administration’s NLRB appointees will likely restore employers’ power to force workers to attend those gatherings,” according to Bloomberg.