Case Headed to NLRB Might Prohibit Employers from Holding ‘Captive Audience’ Meetings

​A case is pending before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with potentially large ramifications for employers and workers. A brief filed in April by Jordan Wolfe, counsel for NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, with the NLRB calls for barring employers’ “captive audience” meetings and prohibiting employers from restricting email to only business use.

Captive Audience Meetings

The brief in the Garten Trucking case “provides a clear road map as to how the general counsel would like to see the law change in a number of areas, including a ban on captive audience meetings,” said Jeff Toppel, an attorney with BianchiBrandt in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Another term for a captive audience meeting is “employer speech during a union campaign,” said Daniel Johns, an attorney with Cozen O’Connor in Philadelphia. The purpose of the communication is to give the employer the opportunity to speak to employees about unionization during a campaign, a right protected by the First Amendment, he said.

Such meetings are currently prohibited only within 24 hours prior to a union election. If the NLRB bans captive audience meetings across the board, employers “would be severely limited in their ability to communicate with their employees regarding unionization,” Toppel said.

A captive audience meeting educates employees about unions, the cost of unions, and what unions can and can’t do, said James Redeker, an attorney with Duane Morris in Philadelphia. Also, there is education about how unions…