Management Memo

In what may be a harbinger of good things to come, the NLRB recently reversed an Administrative Law Judge’s (“ALJ”) finding that Macy’s, Inc.’s confidentiality policies unlawfully interfered with employees’ Section 7 rights.  Unlike many employer policy decisions issued by the Board in recent years, this case does not break new ground or saddle employers with new, unrealistic onuses.  It merely reinforces well-established rules regarding the use of sensitive customer information obtained from an employer’s records and actually reaffirms the right of ...

Last month, in two separate cases, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or the “Board”) and an NLRB Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) found against employers in cases involving the right of employees to wear union insignia at work. While the Board has long held that wearing union t-shirts, stickers and the like is a form of concerted protected activity protected by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (“Act” or “NLRA”), it has historically recognized the right of employers to limit this when necessary to maintain an appropriate atmosphere, these ...

It is Employment Law 101 – employment in the United States is generally at-will.  Equally elementary to HR professionals and employment counsel is the use of a good, strong at-will policy and/or agreement.  So common is the use of at-will policies and agreements that you would be hard pressed to find an employment handbook or an employer that does not make some use of them.

Notwithstanding this universal use, the National Labor Relations Board is poised to target non-union employers which maintain at-will policies or agreements.  Although the NLRB has taken several steps to ease the ...