Know Your Rights
The National Labor Relations Act forbids employers from interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of rights relating to organizing, forming, joining or assisting a labor organization for collective bargaining purposes, or from working together to improve terms and conditions of employment, or refraining from any such activity. Similarly, labor organizations may not restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of these rights.
You have the right to:
• Form, join, or assist a union
• Distribute union literature
• Wear union buttons, t-shirts, or other insignia (except in unusual “special circumstances”) • Solicit coworkers to sign union authorization cards
• Discuss the union with coworkers
• Refuse any of this and refrain from any or all things
Employers/supervisors/managers CANNOT:
• Cannot spy on you (or make it appear they are doing so)
• Cannot coercively question you (pressure/force/intimidate/press/bully you with questions)
• Cannot threaten or bribe you regarding your union activity or the union activities of your coworkers
• Cannot fire, demote, discipline, or penalize you for engaging in these activities
• Cannot restrict your efforts to communicate with coworkers regarding the union if they already allow you to talk about other non-work-related matters during work time
Right to refrain
Federal law protects your right to decline to participate in union organizing or concerted activity, and to campaign against a union during an organizing campaign.
Employers/supervisors/managers CAN enforce that
Working time is for work, so your employer may maintain and enforce non-discriminatory rules limiting solicitation and distribution, except that your employer cannot prohibit you from talking about or soliciting for a union during non-work time, such as before or after work or during break times; or from distributing union literature during non-work time, in non-work areas, such as parking lots or break rooms.
Examples of employer conduct that violates the law:
• Threatening employees with loss of jobs or benefits if they join or vote for a union or engage in protected concerted activity.
• Threatening to close the plant if employees select a union to represent them.
• Questioning employees about their union sympathies or activities in circumstances that tend to interfere with, restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights under the Act.
• Promising benefits to employees to discourage their union support.
• Transferring, laying off, terminating, assigning employees more difficult work tasks, or otherwise punishing employees because they engaged in union or protected concerted activity.
• Transferring, laying off, terminating, assigning employees more difficult work tasks, or otherwise punishing employees because they filed unfair labor practice charges or participated in an investigation conducted by NLRB.
Concerted activity
Federal law protects employees engaged in union activity, but that's only part of the story. Even if you're not represented by a union - even if you have zero interest in having a union - the National Labor Relations Act protects your right to band together with coworkers to improve your lives at work.
You have the right to act with coworkers to address work-related issues in many ways. Examples include: talking with one or more co-workers about your wages and benefits or other working conditions, circulating a petition asking for better hours, participating in a concerted refusal to work in unsafe conditions, and joining with coworkers to talk directly to your employer, to a government agency, or to the media about problems in your workplace. Your employer cannot discharge, discipline, or threaten you for, or coercively question you about, this "protected concerted" activity. However, you can lose protection by saying things about your employer that are egregiously offensive or knowingly and maliciously false, or by publicly disparaging your employer's products or services without relating your complaints to any labor controversy.
Social Media
Even if you are not represented by a union, federal law gives you the right to band together with coworkers to improve your lives at work - including joining together in cyberspace, such as on Facebook.
Using social media can be a form of "protected concerted" activity. You have the right to address work-related issues and share information about pay, benefits, and working conditions with coworkers on Facebook, YouTube, and other social media. But just individually griping about some aspect of work is not "concerted activity": what you say must have some relation to group action, or seek to initiate, induce, or prepare for group action, or bring a group complaint to the attention of management.
If you think your rights have been violated
If you believe your rights or the rights of others have been violated, please promptly contact our Organizing Director, Shane Anderson, at [email protected] or 916-291-8749.
Supervisors who have been discriminated against for refusing to violate the NLRA may also be covered by the NLRA.
Reminder!
Employee rights include:
• Forming, or attempting to form, a union in your workplace;
• Joining a union whether the union is recognized by your employer or not;
• Assisting a union in organizing your fellow employees;
• Refusing to do any or all of these things.
• To be fairly represented by a union.
National Labor Relations Board Link