Apple store managers did not violate the National Labor Relations Act by questioning a worker about a union campaign and confiscating union pamphlets from an employee breakroom, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled July 7 in Apple v. NLRB. Reversing an NLRB decision, the Fifth Circuit found no coercive interrogation at Apple’s World Trade Center store. The court described the conversation, in which a manager asked a worker whether he had discussed wages with coworkers and affirmed the worker’s rights to discuss unionization with coworkers, as a passing exchange between one manager and one employee.
The court said it is not automatically illegal for a manager to ask a worker about a union organizing drive, and there was no evidence of anti-union animus or threats of reprisal. The confiscation of the union pamphlets resulted from Apple’s consistent removal of “all unattended written materials from the breakroom – regardless of their content,” the court said. Apple did not ban distribution of the pamphlets, only their being left unattended, it said.
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