In 2020, the NLRB revised the rules around blocking charges holding up decertification votes, allowing for the election to proceed and then holding the ballots until after the unfair labor charges were handled. The Biden board proposed a new rule reversing this change, and once again allowing unions to file spurious charges to delay elections it suspects it will lose.
NLRB Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has issued yet another memo, this one intended to upend particular management practices driven by automation. Under scrutiny are such technologies as wearable devices, cameras, radio-frequency identification badges, GPS tracking devices, keylogging and screenshot software, webcam photos, and audio recordings. Quoting Abruzzo from the NLRB website,
“It concerns me that employers could use these technologies to interfere with the exercise of Section 7 rights under the National Labor Relations Act by significantly impairing or negating employees’ ability to engage in protected activity—and to keep that activity confidential from their employer,” Abruzzo said. “Thus, I plan to urge the Board, to the greatest extent possible, to apply the Act to protect employees from intrusive or abusive electronic monitoring and automated management practices that would have a tendency to interfere with Section 7 rights.”
Pro-union pundits have decried many new automated management technologies as new “surveillance methods” designed to prevent union organizing.
Following the Abruzzo playbook, she has characterized this effort as an interagency approach along with the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice.
With the NLRB’s changed pandemic test, in-person voting is again becoming the norm for union representation elections. The prior standards have been replaced with the community transmission element for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Community Level system, which uses Covid hospitalization rates rather than case counts or test positivity rates to assess hazard levels at the county level. Under that new factor, the CDC level needs to be “high” to trigger a mail-in election.
A Missouri Teamsters local saw a 2020 election win tossed out when a Federal judge ruled that the union failed to ensure the participant’s votes were kept secret.
Connecticut, the second state to attempt to prevent “captive audience” meetings, now faces a suit to overturn its new law. Party to the effort are the U.S Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, National Retail Federation, Associated Builders and Contractors and several Connecticut-based business groups.
As we’ve mentioned often, even though the workload at the NLRB is nowhere near any kind of “historic high,” the board is claiming itself in dire straights and continues to seek more funding. Because the $45 million raise the board is seeking is miniscule compared to other items in the budget negotiations, pro-union advocates see the lame duck session as the best chance to secure a bump.
