NLRB Slams Workers Again in Guild E-mail Ruling

The National Labor Relations Board has dealt yet another blow to workers' rights, ruling in a case involving CWA journalists that employers can ban union-related messages from being sent through a company's e-mail system.

The case has been pending since 2000 and stems from three e-mails sent by the then-president of the Eugene Newspaper Guild in Oregon. The e-mails discussed a union rally and urged members of TNG-CWA Local 37194 to wear union colors to support contract talks.

The 3-2 NLRB ruling was split along party lines, with outgoing Chairman Robert Battista voting with fellow Republicans to declare that e-mail is company "property" and employers can restrict its use with virtually no limitations.

Dissenting Democratic members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh said the anti-worker majority on the NLRB has made the board "the Rip Van Winkle of administrative agencies" by failing to recognize how e-mail has forever changed communication at work and beyond.

 "The majority erroneously treats the employer's asserted 'property interest' in e-mail – a questionable interest here, in any event – as paramount, and fails to give due consideration to employee rights and the appropriate balancing of the parties' legitimate interests," they wrote in dissenting arguments.

TNG-CWA President Linda Foley called the decision "a continuation of the Bush NLRB crusade to shut down the rights of workers." Especially appalling, she said, is that the case involves a newspaper that is otherwise a champion of free speech.

The ruling has drawn fire from labor leaders around the country. AFL-CIO General Counsel Jonathan Hiatt told the New York Times that, "Anyone with e-mail knows that this is how employees communicate with each other in today's workplace. Outrageously, in allowing employers to ban such communications for union purposes, the Bush labor board has again struck at the heart of what the nation's labor laws were intended to protect — the right of employees to discuss working conditions and other matters of mutual concern."

Guild leaders say the board's  finding that the newspaper's e-mail policy doesn't discriminate against the union can be disproved by the words of the paper's own lawyer.

"During bargaining on a communications policy it proposed in August of 2001, the company's attorney, Michael Zinser, said that under the company's proposal, the Guild could not use e-mail to communicate with its members, but that it could be used by employees who wanted to decertify the union," said Eugene local co-president Randi Bjornstand. "Six years later, I still think that smacks of illegal discrimination."