This Month’s Assortment of NLRB Advice Memos – A Day Without Immigrants, Weingarten Rights, and Picketing

 In

A steady stream of Advice Memoranda from the National Labor Relations Board’s Office of the General Counsel (OGC) has continued to issue over the past six months, as we previously discussed in many of our monthly E-updates. Eight additional memos were issued on August 15, 2018, although some were originally prepared years earlier. Of particular interest are the following:

  • International Warehouse Group (October 5, 2017). The OGC found that the employer violated employees’ rights to engage in protected concerted activities when it terminated and threatened to terminate those employees for participation in the ”Day Without Immigrants.” Their participation was deemed to be a protected strike for their mutual aid and protection, as the employees’ protest was “in large part” due to concerns about mistreatment by their employer, as well as tied to concerns about workplace immigration enforcement, about which the employer could have pledged not to cooperate with immigration authorities.
  • Corona Regional Medical Center (December 9, 2014). The OGC determined that various rights commence immediately after the union wins an election, even where the employer challenges the election results and before the Board certifies the union as the employees’ collective bargaining representative. These include: (1) Weingarten rights, which is the right to union representation in an investigatory interview that could lead to discipline; (2) the obligation to bargain over changes to the terms and conditions of employment, specifically including discretionary discipline of individual employees; and (3) the duty to furnish information to the union to enable it to carry out its statutory obligations as the employees’ collective bargaining representative.
  • SEIU Healthcare 119NW (March 30, 2018). The OGC found that the union violated the NLRA by sending picketers to the lobby of a hospice care center that was located on an upper level of a hospital during a strike. The picketers arguably caused an unlawful disturbance, especially given the tranquil environment of the hospice setting.