The ruling stems from a complaint over Amazon’s conduct at its Staten Island, New York facilities, where the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) was engaged in such a campaign. The ALU alleged that Amazon held multiple mandatory meetings during work hours to discourage union support among employees. The NLRB agreed, ruling that Amazon’s actions constituted an unfair labor practice under Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA.
The board found that such meetings, known as “captive-audience” meetings, interfere with employees’ rights under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which guarantees workers the freedom to engage in union activities or to refrain from doing so.
“The power to compel attendance at captive-audience meetings is not an incident of Section 8(c)’s protection of employers’ speech,” the board said in the decision. “Instead, exercising the power to compel attendance is quintessentially conduct by which employers ‘interfere with’ employees’ exercise of their own Section 7 rights.”
The decision marks a departure from the precedent set in the 1948 case of Babcock & Wilcox Co., which allowed employers to hold mandatory meetings to express their views on unionization. The NLRB reasoned that the prior standard failed to adequately protect employees’ statutory rights.
“The fundamental purpose of the Act, rather, is to limit the traditional power of employers to command and control their employees by carving out a space for employees to engage in protected concerted activity—even at work, during the workday,” the board said. “An employer’s authority over its employees must be balanced against employees’ Section 7 rights. Our decision today strikes such a balance.”
In a dissenting opinion, board member Marvin E. Kaplan argued that the majority’s decision conflicts with both Section 8(c) of the NLRA and the First Amendment. He contended that employers have the right to express their views, provided they do not threaten or coerce employees, and that mandatory meetings during work hours are a standard practice.
“But requiring employees to attend a meeting at which the employer expresses its views about unionization cannot reasonably be likened to these unlawful actions,” Kaplan stated in his dissent. “To the contrary, mere attendance at a captive-audience meeting does not suggest that the employees in the audience hold any position on unions, much less compel them to express a position, any more than mere attendance at any meeting indicates that the listener necessarily agrees with the speaker.”
In response to the dissent, the majority stated that the First Amendment “comfortably accommodates an employer’s robust right to express its views on unionization with an employee’s right to decline to listen to those views.”
The board clarified that while employers may still hold meetings to express their views on unionization, attendance must be voluntary.
According to the order, the NLRB’s decision is prospective, meaning it will apply to future cases but will not retroactively penalize employers who previously held mandatory meetings under the old standard.
“Captive audience meetings—which give employers near-unfettered freedom to force their message about unionization on workers under threat of discipline or discharge—undermine this important goal,“ NLRB Chairman Lauren McFerran said in a statement. ”Today’s decision better protects workers’ freedom to make their own choices in exercising their rights under the Act, while ensuring that employers can convey their views about unionization in a noncoercive manner.”
Amazon told The Epoch Times in a statement that they plan to appeal the decision.
“This decision ignores over 75 years of precedent, contradicts the express language of the NLRA, and violates the First Amendment – it’s wrong on the facts and the law, and we intend to appeal,“ Amazon spokesperson Mary Kate Paradis wrote in an email. ”Meetings like this are held by many companies because the decision about whether or not to join a union is an important one, and employees deserve to understand the facts so they can make an informed choice.”
