NLRB Ruling Could Allow Unions To Usurp Company Email Accounts

If you think that your company's email accounts are the company's to control, think again! The NLRB has announced that it will decide whether employers must permit employees to use workplace email in their collective action to improve wages, hours and working conditions - possibly handing unions a major weapon in their efforts to unionize. The case, Purple Communications, Inc., is attached here. Interested parties are invited to submit briefs by June 16, 2014.

In Purple Communications, the Administrative Law Judge followed established precedent in holding that the employer did not have to permit use of its email systems for union purposes. The Board, however, said - not so fast, and could now overturn the Register Guard decision issued during President Bush's administration, which held that "employees have no statutory right to use the[ir] Employer's e-mail system for Section 7 purposes." 351 NLRB 1110 (2007), enfd. in relevant part and remanded sub nom. Guard Publishing v. NLRB, 571 F.3d 53 (D.C. Cir. 2009). A more detailed summary of the Board's decision in Register Guard is available here.

A Board decision to overturn Register Guard would be consistent with the Board's proposed regulations to expedite union elections and aid organizing efforts, discussed here. While the agency's motivation is clearly intended to encourage and aid union organizing activity, such a ruling will also give plaintiffs' lawyers perhaps the single best tool to target employees in their recruitment efforts for class action lawsuits or assembly-line, single-plaintiff actions.

This invitation for briefs is similar to the NLRB's request in the...