Urgent: Employers can restrict your e-mail

The actual NLRB ruling centers on a case involving a newspaper in Oregon, where an employee, who was also the union president, sent out e-mails about union activity and was then reprimanded by her managers because the e-mail supposedly violated the company’s policies.

In the case, the board found that the employer did not violate the law “by maintaining a policy that prohibited employees from using the employer’s e-mail system for any ‘non-job-related solicitations.’”

The NLRB’s purpose is to protect workers against unfair labor practices involving employee rights to organize or not to organize, so the agency is supposed to be the watchdog group that keeps an eye on companies trying to take away such rights. That’s why the case ended up at the agency’s door because its members had to decide if restricting such solicitations was running roughshod over workers’ abilities to organize and bargain collectively with employers for fair wages and working conditions.

Some legal experts don’t think the ruling will be that far reaching.

The problem is a practical one, says Jules Crystal, labor law attorney in Chicago for Bryan Cave LLP. “What employer really wants to put all those kinds of restrictions on its employees? I just don’t see why you would want to come off as Attila the Hun to your employees. I don’t want to know what my employees are accessing or e-mailing as long as they’re doing the work.”

There’s also a chance this recent ruling, among many other NLRB decisions this year that have been deemed “anti-union”, may be reassessed sooner than later if a new party moves into the Oval Office.

“The trend will continue until the Bush Administration is over and unless a Democrat wins the White House,” says Jane Lauer Barker, a labor attorney with Pitta & Dreier LLP.

As for the e-mail ruling, Barker believes there is a lot of gray area in determining how things will play out in the workplace. While it mainly addresses “solicitations”, she explains, what’s to keep an employer from interpreting the decision as now having card blanche to prohibit all union-employee communications.

If an employee at a plant or office injures themselves and e-mails a union representative who then e-mails all the workers at the company to be careful of a particular device or office machine, could that be restricted under the recent ruling?

“It’s really not clear how far the board’s decision goes,” Barker maintains.

Despite the unknowns and the potential restrictions, with the nature of electronic communications today — including the widespread use of cell phones and the explosion of the Web — other tools, may fill the company e-mail void.

“Working people are incredibly resilient,” says the SEIU’s Stern, “and whether it’s through social networking sites, new technologies or old tried-and-true organizing, we will continue to find ways to support working people in their efforts to unite to improve their lives.”

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