Bulletin Board Use and Union Rights: NLRA Section 7 Case Study

Introduction

Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) grants employees the right to affiliate with a labor union of their choosing and to engage in concerted activity on behalf of that union, including communicating with and soliciting support from coworkers. This paper answers a series of case study questions demonstrating how the provisions of Section 7 influence the use of bulletin boards in the workplace.

Are Employers Required to Have Bulletin Boards?

State law requires employers to post certain information — such as notices about employment laws, health and safety regulations, and minimum wage requirements — in a manner that is accessible to employees. However, such postings do not necessarily have to appear on bulletin boards; they can be communicated via email, social media platforms, or in face-to-face settings such as meetings and conferences. For this reason, employers are not legally obligated to maintain bulletin boards in their organizations (Holley, Jennings & Wolters 220). All the same, most employers choose to have them because bulletin boards tend to provide more reliable communication than email, telephone calls, or meetings. For instance, owing to job-related demands, employees may not be able to check their email regularly; moreover, it can be costly for an organization to hold meetings or seminars every time an urgent matter needs to be communicated.

Beyond ensuring more reliable and less costly communication, bulletin boards can also benefit employees directly. They provide a platform through which employees can learn about vacant positions, upcoming training programs, and other human resource initiatives. When recruiting internally, posting open positions on a bulletin board in a high-traffic area — such as a hallway, cafeteria, or break room — is more cost-effective and reliable than using email or word-of-mouth. Furthermore, bulletin boards can help foster stronger bonds among employees by offering a space where they can share photographs of personal events such as vacations, graduations, births, and marriages. By providing such spaces, employers can increase employee motivation, signaling that the organization values employees' personal lives and social well-being. It is therefore beneficial for an employer to maintain bulletin boards even though the law does not require it, as they serve the day-to-day communication needs of the organization.

Can Employees Provide Their Own Bulletin Boards?

No. As noted above, employers have a duty to communicate certain crucial information to employees in a manner that is accessible and conspicuous. The overriding purpose of such communication is to ensure that employees remain aware of their rights and freedoms at the workplace. However, since the law does not require employers to use bulletin boards for this purpose, the decision of whether or not to have one is the employer's alone. Bulletin boards will only be present in an organization if the employer deems it appropriate and if organizational policy permits them.

Employees, therefore — even though they have a right to access crucial communications from their employers — have no right to provide and mount their own bulletin boards without the employer's consent. The appropriate course of action is for employees to request that the employer install a bulletin board and to provide compelling reasons demonstrating how the organization would benefit from doing so.

Conclusion

This analysis demonstrates that while employers enjoy broad discretion over bulletin board policies — including whether to maintain them and what content may be posted — that discretion is not unlimited. Section 7 of the NLRA protects employees' rights to engage in union-related concerted activity, and the National Labor Relations Board has consistently held that employers may not selectively enforce content restrictions to suppress union organizing. When an employer permits general personal postings on a bulletin board but removes only union-related content, that selective enforcement constitutes an unlawful interference with protected activity under the NLRA.

Works Cited

Baird, Eileen. "Labor Law — Access to Bulletin Boards." Western New England Law Review 5.297 (1982): 297–318. Print.

Holley, William, Kenneth Jennings, and Roger Wolters. The Labor Relations Process. 10th ed. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.

O'Keefe, Bryan. "National Labor Relations Board Permits Employees to Use Email Workplace Systems for Union Activity." Baker & Hostetler LLP, 15 Dec. 2014. Web. 6 September 2015.