By Nelson Cary and Allen Kinzer
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has released a biting analysis of the NLRB’s recent decisions that attack employers’ basic handbook policies. The lengthy report summarizes a number of decisions that find many basic handbook policies on courtesy, respect, and confidentiality in the workplace to be unlawful under the NLRA. Many of these cases have been covered in earlier posts on this blog. The report says these cases reflect a “wildly expansive” reading of the NLRA, and questions the impartiality of the NLRB.
The NLRB has rendered unlawful many common handbook policies designed to comply with anti-discrimination and anti-harassment laws. Thus, by outlawing such policies, the NLRB has placed employers in a tough spot, with the EEOC on one-side advocating decency and tolerance in the workplace and the NLRB on the other side outlawing or nitpicking the very policies designed to promote decency and tolerance in the workplace. The Chamber’s report is entitled Theater of the Absurd: The NLRB Takes on the Employee Handbook.