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NLRB outlaws captive audience meetings

11/18/24

By: Thomas R. Starks

In a case involving Amazon, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) issued a ruling on November 13, 2024 prohibiting employers from holding mandatory captive audience meetings. Captive audience meetings have been a powerful tool for employers to express their views against unionization because companies use these mandatory meetings to share how they would react to unionization and encourage employees to push back against it.  

The ruling was based on three primary considerations. First, requiring workers to attend anti-union gatherings violates Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) because it presents a tendency to interfere with and coerce employees against exercising their rights under Section 7. Second, captive audience meetings allow employers to observe and surveil employees while the company addresses employees’ Section 7 rights. Finally, the NLRB noted that these meetings often carry the suggestion of discipline or discharge, making them a coercive message against unionization. 

Lauren McFerran, the Chair of the NLRB said “[e]nsuring that workers can make a truly free choice about whether they want union representation is one of the fundamental goals of the National Labor Relations Act.”  She went on to express that captive audience meetings “give employers near-unfettered freedom to force their message about unionization on workers under threat of discipline or discharge—undermine this important goal.” 

Importantly, this ruling does not prevent an employer from holding meetings with workers to share the company’s views on unionization if the meeting is voluntary, no attendance records of the meeting are maintained, and the subject matter is provided in advance.   

The NLRB’s decision overturned its 1948 ruling in Babcock & Wilcox Co., which permitted mandatory anti-union gatherings. The board said its prohibition on those meetings will apply prospectively only, to accommodate the reliance that employers may have put on the 76-year-old precedent that it struck down. 

While the democratic board majority provided unions a victory with its captive audience ban, that win may be short-lived since the incoming Trump administration’s NLRB appointees likely will restore employers’ power to force workers to attend those gatherings. 

Please contact  Thomas R. Starks at thomas.starks@fmglaw.com or your local FMG attorney for assistance with labor related claims.