Worker Freedom Acts

State Worker Freedom bills seek to prohibit workplace mandatory meeting at which employees must listen to their employer's views of labor-related, political, and religious issues (the AFL-CIO blog has more on these types of meetings discussing political and religious issues). 

Under federal labor law, such captive audience speeches are permitted by employers as long as they are not coercive and unions generally do not have the same access to employees at work to make counter captive audience speeches. Research has shown that these speeches are highly effective in defeating union organizational campaigns.  It is not surprising therefore that most employers use them and use them often.

Yesterday, the Michigan House of Representative passed a Worker Freedom bill (copy of bill here).  The legislation moves on to the Michigan Senate, which is unlikely to pass it given the slim Republican majority in that chamber.

Nevertheless, this legislation brings up important constitutional and labor preemption issues.  Constitutional issues include whether these laws are a proper time, place, and manner restriction, whether employers have less speech rights when talking to a captive audience, and whether such laws are content discriminatory.  The labor preemption issues mostly surround so-called Machinist preemption, which preempts state laws which although not directly interfering with provisions in the National Labor Relations Act, do indirectly interfere with an area of law that was intended by Congress to be left to the free play of economic forces.

In my paper, Towards the Viability of State-Based Legislation to Address Workplace Captive Audience Meetings in the United States, I argue that such state Worker Freedom laws should not be preempted because states retain the right to regulate property rights of employers and contractual relations between employers and employees even in light of the NLRA. 

Of course, until one of these Worker Freedom Acts is actually passed and legally challenged, the viability of these laws remains an open question.

PS