Bans on taking photos at work are addressed in the NLRB report.
Bans on taking photos at work are addressed in the NLRB report.

The NLRB’s General Counsel’s office today released a lengthy report “concerning recent employer rule” cases.

That sounds generic. It’s not.

Rather, the NLRB is now outlining its views on otherwise-neutral employer policies and whether they could be deemed to

The Connecticut Legal Conference on Monday (produced by the Connecticut Bar Association) had several noteworthy programs, including a few on labor & employment law.  In today’s post, I’m going to recap the presentation by David Lopez, the current EEOC General Counsel.   He talked about the Top 10 Developments in EEOC Litigation over the last few

I’ve had a little more time to digest the latest memo from the NLRB opining on what is and what isn’t appropriate for employers to have in their policies. And I’ve come to a very serious conclusion:

It’s an utter mess. 

New Guidance = Utter Mess

(Fellow employment lawyers use the phrases “bungled mess” (Jon Hyman), “not good” (Molly DiBianca), and “Inconsistent, overreaching, it’s a hot tepid mess” (Eric Meyer) to describe the latest missive.)

For employers, make no mistake: This is the NLRB’s attempt at an all-out, crazy assault on an employer’s ability to have policies that have any teeth to them. Even the most innocuous of policies can get shot down by the NLRB as being over broad and illegal. 

For example, telling employees “Don’t release confidential guest, team member or company information. . . .” is now deemed to be “illegal” because it could, in the NLRB’s view, “reasonably be interpreted as prohibiting employees from discussing and disclosing information regarding their own conditions of employment, as well as the conditions of employment of employees other than themselves–activities that are clearly protected by Section 7.”Continue Reading After NLRB’s Memo, Drafting Employment Policies Got Trickier