This week we're going to talk about the National Labor Relations Act. This is one of the cornerstones of employment law. According to this, employees have the right to organize and bargain collectively for wages, hours and working conditions.
When you think about it, working conditions is basically anything tied within a workplace. Something as simple as donuts in the break room can be considered a working condition. Now, there are some criteria tied on both sides. Both the owner's side and the employee side and these have to do with fair labor practices.
For example, if you're an owner, you can’t have undue influence on the election for bringing in the union. What will happen is, the employees decide to do an election to accept or reject the union. The union will come in, make their case, and you make your case.
As the owner, you can’t have one-on-one meetings with your employees about the election. You have to meet them all at once. So as an example of undue influence. There was a case in North Carolina a few years ago where the union came in and they wanted to try to bring a union into the workplace and there was an election.
The night before the election, the union reps basically had a party at the local bowling alley to bring the employees in and try to convince them to vote for the union. Which is totally legal.
One of the VPs of the company, they were hidden in the bushes and they cornered one of the employees and they told the employee, "Hey, if you don't help me defeat this election, we're going to fire you. But if you help us win, we'll make sure you get promoted and have a long-term place in the company."
Well, it turns out the union actually lost, like by 90%. 90% of the employees didn't want the union. Of course, the union reps found out about what the VP did, went to court and because of undue influence from the ownership side. From that VP, even though the VP acted on his own. Supposedly, the ownership knew nothing about it. Because the VP was an executive member of the company, the judge threw out the election results and put the Union into the company.
You just have to make sure you do the right thing. But employees do have the right to organize and usually, this happens because the ownership is not taking care of the employees or the employees are not happy. Basically, as I said before, and I'll always say, make sure you take care of your employees, make sure you're doing the right thing. Thank you for your time today. and remember to be great every day.
Below is the link the video and to more information about the NLRA.
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