NLRB vs. the Truth

A column in the Washington Examiner discusses the ramifications of the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) opposition to what it calls "captive audience" meetings, in which employers explain the ramifications of unionizing to their employees:

I hear the NLRB recommends this protective headgear when researching union membership on the web... (Image by Novia Wu, via Unsplash, license.)

The NLRB's vision would also require employees to self-select for these informational meetings, automatically reducing the number of people who will benefit. Think of all-staff meetings on workplace safety, reorganization efforts, or employee benefits. An employee can't be expected to know whether or how they will benefit from such a meeting until they attend. Hence, such meetings are typically required for all employees.

The board clearly underestimates stigma and peer pressure in the workplace too. By voluntarily attending an employer meeting on the topic, employees may trigger peer pressure from colleagues who suspect they have misgivings about voting for the union. [bold added]

The author is far more charitable than the bureaucrats at the NLRB deserve when he says they underestimate the problem of peer pressure around such meetings: Past efforts to expand union membership have also centered around procedures that would have invited bullying by causing individuals who might not wish to unionize to basically have to admit it publicly when doing so could cause them to become targets of those who do.

Indeed, this is entirely consistent with the whole idea of forcing employers to deal with unions in the first place.

-- CAV