Busting the Union Buster: Why a Fair Balance of Employees' Right to Unionize and Employer Free Speech Requires Workplace Meetings Discussing the Employer's Views on Unionization to be Voluntary

Authors

Jennifer L. Murray

Abstract

On April 7, 2022, National Labor Relations Board (the "Board") General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo sent shockwaves through American industries when she issued GC Memo 22-04. The memo announced that she would be asking the Board to find a violation of the National Labor Relations Act ("the Act" or "the Wagner Act") for mandatory meetings in which employees are required to listen to employer speech concerning the exercise of their statutory labor rights.¹ Days later, Abruzzo filed a brief in a case pending before the Board, Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC, asking the Board to ban such meetings.² These meetings are famously referred to as "captive audience meetings."³ While the Board has previously held that companies can require employees to attend anti-union meetings, the agency's current General Counsel views such meetings as inherently coercive and illegal.⁴ Accordingly, her office is actively pursuing cases that could recast precedent by overturning the presumption long-enjoyed by employers: the Act affords them the privilege to require employees during the workday to listen to the company's anti-union rhetoric leading up to a union election.⁵

First Page

382

Recommended Citation

Jennifer L. Murray, Busting the Union Buster: Why a Fair Balance of Employees' Right to Unionize and Employer Free Speech Requires Workplace Meetings Discussing the Employer's Views on Unionization to be Voluntary, 62 Duq. L. Rev. 382 (2024).
Available at: https://dsc.duq.edu/dlr/vol62/iss2/10