NT Lakis attorneys, joined by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in an important case involving the right of an employer to discipline an employee for gross misconduct occurring on the picket line.
Our brief in Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. v. NLRB urges the full court to review and reverse a troubling ruling by a divided, three-judge panel of the court that found that racist statements directed at African-American replacement workers by a picketing employee constituted protected speech under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). In so ruling, the panel found that the employer was precluded from disciplining an employee, even though his conduct represented a blatant violation of the employer’s well established anti-harassment policy.
In particular, we point out that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires an employer to act promptly to correct harassing conduct, wherever it occurs, including on a picket line. We argue that under the panel’s ruling, however, a company is put in an untenable position in a situation such as this of either enforcing its anti-harassment policy and risking an NLRA violation, or risking an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charge if it ignores the harassing conduct.
A copy of our brief in Cooper Tire is available here.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.