A number of the decisions applied to employers’ ability to control access to their property, including the ability of employers to:
- Restrict protests on their property by a contractor’s employees;
- Prohibit union activity in their public cafeterias (primarily affects health care facilities); and
- Prohibit union solicitations in parking lots, despite allowing charitable solicitations, as long as the employer does not allow solicitations from other membership groups.
Other key decisions:
- Easing the ability of an employer to withdraw recognition of a union in the face of evidence of a loss of union support by the workers;
- Favorable clarification of a previous ruling restricting the ability of unions to organize so-called “micro-units”; and
- Expanding the ability of employers to rely on provisions in a collective bargaining agreement that allow changes in terms and conditions of employment without having to bargain with the union over those changes.
Why it’s important: Generally when there is a change of party in the White House, it takes time for a new NLRB to hit its stride. Along with a major decision regarding independent contractors, these decisions show that the current Board under Chairman John Ring is actively moving toward shaping the law in a more balanced manner, from a management point of view. Yet, the sharp dissents by Democrat Lauren McFerran—who accused the decision in the last case described above as “posing a grave threat to the practice of collective bargaining”—make it clear that putting a different party in the White House would very likely lead to reversals of some or all of these decisions. For NLRB watchers of the past few decades, this see-saw effect will be all too familiar.
