Urgent: Employers can restrict your e-mail

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

When you have an old car to sell, or plans to hold a fundraiser for a local kid who’s sick, you probably send an e-mail to coworkers instead of posting a notice on a company bulletin board, or actually walking over to a colleague in a nearby cube or office.

Why? It’s easy.

E-mail has also made it quite easy for unions to send messages about upcoming meetings or strikes to their members, or to employees whom they are trying to organize.

What if e-mail were banned for all such purposes?

Unfortunately, it’s not a what-if.

Right before Christmas, at a time when most of us were knee deep in the holiday spirit, the National Labor Relations Board made a decision that could impact employee use of e-mail across the country. The board ruled that employers could prohibit the use of company e-mail when it came to union organizing. And legal experts say if a company does decide to do that, they must also restrict other types of e-mail solicitations, or risk running afoul of the law.

While use of company e-mail for personal reasons is already a no no at many companies, most supervisors are loathe to go through every single employee e-mail interaction if the worker is doing his or her job well.

The NLRB ruling, however, could turn up the volume on employee e-mail monitoring given that employers now have the added benefit of weeding out any union activity, labor experts say.

The decision clearly undercuts organizing efforts among unions who have come to rely on e-mail as a quick way to get information to the rank and file. But it also could have some unintended results for workers who have also come to rely on email as a way to keep connected to other employees socially and to their communities outside of the workplace, says Gary Chaison, management professor at the Clark University’s Graduate School of Management.

“E-mail is cheap and efficient. Everybody’s doing it,” he adds.

Labor advocates are up in arms over the ruling, claiming this is yet another anti-union decision by a board — made up of three Republicans and two Democrats — that has made many decisions along party lines. (The President with U.S. Senate consent appoints the five members of the board.)

“The Bush labor board has consistently demonstrated hostility toward workers who want to unite for a voice in the workplace, so this latest brand of discrimination unfortunately comes as no surprise,” Andy Stern, president, Service Employees International Union. 

“We need a labor board that truly has an interest in the needs of working people, not one eager to assist those corporate interests bent on trying to intimidate or censor workers who want to form a union to improve their jobs and the services they provide,” he adds. “This ruling is another sad example of how the deck is stacked against workers in America.”

But some management lawyers see the board’s ruling as long overdue. “If an employer pays for and operates a communications systems it has the right to restrict the content of communication,” explains Jon Meer, an attorney who chairs the Los Angeles section of the DLA Piper's labor and employment practice.

Most large unions, he adds, have their own Web sites where employees can go and get information off of the Internet. “They don’t need to use an employer’s e-mail system.”

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