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Employers can't require workers to attend 'captive audience' anti-union meetings [1]
['Rob Beschizza']
Date: 2024-11-14
The National Labor Relations Board ruled yesterday that "captive audience" meetings are illegal. Employers may not require workers to attend presentations that explain to them the company's position on whether they should not join or form unions.
Today, the Board issued a decision in Amazon.com Services LLC, ruling that an employer violates the National Labor Relations Act by requiring employees under threat of discipline or discharge to attend meetings in which the employer expresses its views on unionization. Overruling Babcock & Wilcox Co., 77 NLRB 577 (1948), the Board explained thatsuch meetings—commonly known as captive-audience meetings—violate Section 8(a)(1) of the Act because they have a reasonable tendency to interfere with and coerce employees in the exercise of their Section 7 rights. However, the Board made clear that an employer may lawfully hold meetings with workers to express its views on unionization so long as workers are provided reasonable advance notice of: the subject of any such meeting, that attendance is voluntary with no adverse consequences for failure to attend, and that no attendance records of the meeting will be kept.
The Board articulated several reasons why captive audience meetings interfere with employees' rights under the Act, thus violating Section 8(a)(1). First, such meetings interfere with an employee's right under Section 7 of the Act to freely decide whether, when, and how to participate in a debate concerning union representation, or refrain from doing so. Second, captive audience meetings provide a mechanism for an employer to observe and surveil employees as it addresses the exercise of employees' Section 7 rights. Finally, an employer's ability to compel attendance at such meetings on pain of discipline or discharge lends a coercive character to the message regarding unionization that employees are forced to receive. The employer's ability to require attendance at such meetings demonstrates the employer's economic power over its employees and reasonably tends to inhibit them from acting freely in exercising their rights.
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