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The NLRB's New Focus: Non-Union Employers

BY Steven M. Bernstein
June 20, 2013

The figures on union membership have been crunched for decades now, yet the percentages have never been lower than they are right now. At 6.6% of the private sector workforce, organized labor is in the midst of its greatest down-turn since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935. Any number of factors have contributed to this decline, and additional membership losses are projected over the coming years.

To an agency tasked with overseeing representation elections and investigating unfair labor practices that typically flow from organizing campaigns, these figures paint a sobering picture for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or the Board). Confronting a world in which unions wield diminishing influence, the Board is facing a decline in labor activity that threatens to drain its dockets ' and ultimately its enforcement budgets.

Within this changing landscape, the Board has revisited an age-old doctrine to define a new role for itself that will ensure continued viability outside the context of organized labor. That doctrine has long been referred to as “concerted protected activity,” a term that emanates from Section 7 of the NLRA. Encroachment upon an employee's Section 7 rights constituted an independent violation of Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA. To drive home the point, the Board recently launched a website in an effort to openly promote the doctrine. The vehicle employed by the Board to revive this doctrine ' the employee handbook ' is as common to the workplace as employees themselves.

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