Recently Released NLRB “Advice Memos” Address Legality of Workplace Rules Under Federal Labor Law

The General Counsel (GC) of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) has recently made public several internal “Advice Memoranda” that we think may be of interest to employers.

A pair of advice memos, Coastal Industries and CVS Health, shed more light on how the NLRB views the interaction of employer workplace rules with federal labor law protections following adoption by the Board last year of a new, more balanced standard for assessing the legality of such rules. The Coastal Industries memo is particularly noteworthy because the GC declined to extend the Board’s controversial rule regarding employee use of an employer’s email system to social media and other electronic communications systems.

A third Advice Memo, Centura, concludes that an employer lawfully terminated an HR employee who shared wage data with other employees. While the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protects the right of employees to share wage information with each other, it permits employers to maintain confidentiality policies for employees who have access to other employees’ pay data as part of their job. This memo provides helpful guidance on how such a policy may be lawfully applied.

Copies of the three Advice Memos are available online.

Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.