Counsel opposes NLRB policy on mandatory employer meetings

The National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel plans to ask the agency to find that mandatory meetings in which employees are forced to listen to employers urging them to reject union representation are a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.

NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said in a memo to all field offices that these meetings “inherently involve an unlawful threat that employees will be disciplined or suffer other reprisals if they exercise their protected right not to listen to such speech.”

She said NLRB case precedent, “which has tolerated such meetings, is at odds with fundamental law principles, our statutory language and our congressional mandate.”

The memo said the board “years ago incorrectly concluded that an employer does not violate the Act by compelling its employees to attend” such meetings, and she will ask it to “correct that anomaly.”