{"id":243603,"date":"2025-05-15T20:26:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T20:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/legal\/nlrb-says-employee-outbursts-regarding-working-conditions-are-protected\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T20:26:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T20:26:12","slug":"nlrb-says-employee-outbursts-regarding-working-conditions-are-protected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=243603","title":{"rendered":"NLRB Says Employee Outbursts Regarding Working Conditions Are Protected"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"post-body-6182382604011227026\" itemprop=\"description articleBody\">\nThe Biden NLRB recently overturned a Trump-era case that allowed employers way too much discretion to fire employees who engage in alleged unprofessional behavior when discussing working conditions. The case involved a union activist who was fired. The behavior that resulted in the termination was <a href=\"https:\/\/casetext.com\/admin-law\/lion-elastomers-1\">described by the Administrative Law Judge<\/a> as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Colone spoke persistently and  argumentatively,and made a brusque, impolite statement to an employee who was leaving the meeting that he should \u201cjust go ahead and leave\u201d be-cause he wasnot needed; he also, upon Dean refusing to provide him with the paperwork related to the new overtime policy, told Dean that he was not doing his job.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"box-sizing: border-box; cursor: text; transform-origin: 0px 0px; transform: scaleX(0.896711);\"\/>\u00a0The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nlrb.gov\/news-outreach\/news-story\/board-returns-to-traditional-standards-for-evaluating-employee-misconduct\">NLRB said<\/a> the harsher standard the GOP Board set was erroneous:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Board has<br \/>\nlong held, with uniform judicial approval, that causation<br \/>\nis not at issue where an employer defends a disciplinary<br \/>\naction based on an employee&#8217;s alleged misconduct in the<br \/>\ncourse of union activity, and the Board determines that<br \/>\nthe misconduct was not sufficiently egregious to deprive<br \/>\nthe employee of the protection of the Act. Everyone<br \/>\nagrees that the disciplinary action was motivated by conduct that the Board\u2014in fulfilling its statutory responsibility to determine the scope of the Act&#8217;s protection\u2014has<br \/>\nfound to be protected. That the employer labeled the<br \/>\nconduct abusive, disloyal, uncivil, or insubordinate does<br \/>\nnot bring its motive into question. Ozburn-Hessey Logistics, LLC, 366 NLRB No. 177, slip op. at 5 (2018), enfd.<br \/>\nin relevant part 803 Fed. Appx. 876, 882-883 (6th Cir.<br \/>\n2020); Roemer Industries, Inc., 362 NLRB 828, 834 fn.<br \/>\n15 (2015) (explaining that where an employer defends<br \/>\ndisciplinary action based on an employee\u2019s misconduct<br \/>\nin the course of protected union activity, and the misconduct was not egregious enough to remove the protections<br \/>\nof the Act, \u201cthe 8(a)(3) violation is established because<br \/>\nthe antiunion motive is not in dispute&#8211;the protected union conduct was the motive for the discipline\u201d), enfd.<br \/>\n688 Fed. Appx. 340 (6th Cir. 2017).\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0The NLRB cited as an example of conduct that is protected:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A good example is the Eighth Circuit\u2019s picket-line misconduct decision in Cooper Tire &amp; Rubber Co. v. NLRB, 866 F.3d 885 (8th Cir. 2017), a case the General Motors Board simply ignored. In Cooper Tire &amp; Rubber, the court enforced the Board\u2019s order requiring reinstatement of a striker who had directed racist taunts at a van carrying replacement workers that had just crossed the picket line. It agreed with the Board\u2019s application of the Clear Pine Mouldings standard and rejected the employer\u2019s argument that Wright Line should apply. 866 F.3d at 889\u2013890. It also rejected the argument that the Board\u2019s order conflicted with the employer\u2019s duty under Title VII, 42 U.S.C. \u00a7\u00a7 2000e, et seq. Id. at 891- 892. The court explained that the striker\u2019s picket-line jibes\u2014racially offensive, stereotyped comments about food \u2014did not create a hostile work environment, nor did Title VII create any legal obligation to fire the striker. Id. at 892.41 The Eighth Circuit\u2019s decision is not anomalous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>The Supreme Court has said repeatedly that Title VII is not \u201ca general civility code for the American workplace.\u201d  As the Court has explained, \u201coffhand comments and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious) will not amount to discriminatory changes in the terms and conditions of employment.\u201d There is no obvious or inevitable conflict, then, between the Board\u2019s approach as reflected in the setting-specific standards and Federal antidiscrimination law. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I can&#8217;t tell you how often the &#8220;general civility code&#8221; language has been thrown at me in sexual and racial harassment cases, so it&#8217;s good to see the NLRB saying what&#8217;s good for the goose is good for the gander. You don&#8217;t want a general civility code? Then you can&#8217;t claim it when people are protesting or discussing working conditions.<\/p>\n<p>I generally suggest that employees remain professional when discussing working conditions with management and coworkers. But the NLRB has made it much more difficult for employers to fire employees who are advocating for better working conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>See? Elections matter. Vote well in 2024.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: transparent; cursor: text; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.7098px; left: 150.447px; position: absolute; top: 601.477px; transform-origin: 0px 0px; transform: scaleX(0.886846); white-space: pre;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Biden NLRB recently overturned a Trump-era case that allowed employers way too much discretion to fire employees who engage in alleged unprofessional behavior when discussing working conditions. The case involved a union activist who was fired. The behavior that resulted in the termination was described by the Administrative Law Judge as follows: Colone spoke [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[15835,13604,30655,89438,3384,1600],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-243603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal","tag-conditions","tag-employee","tag-nlrb","tag-outbursts","tag-protected","tag-working"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>NLRB Says Employee Outbursts Regarding Working Conditions Are Protected - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=243603\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NLRB Says Employee Outbursts Regarding Working Conditions Are Protected - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Biden NLRB recently overturned a Trump-era case that allowed employers way too much discretion to fire employees who engage in alleged unprofessional behavior when discussing working conditions. 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