NLRB Reverses Precedent on Employees' Off-Duty Access to Worksites

 Today, the NLRB issued another major reversal, this time with regard to employees’ access to their worksite. The case is Bexar Performing Arts Center Foundation, which involved symphony employees who tried to peacefully hand out leaflets on the sidewalk outside the performing arts center where they usually worked. The problem? Their employer leased space from a third-party property owner, who called the police to remove them from the sidewalk.

In Bexar, the Board overruled two of its cases--New York New York and Simon DeBartolo—which held that employees in these generally had access rights to public areas of the worksite if they regularly worked for the employer (the symphony in Bexar), even if they did not work exclusively at the property in question. The property owner (the performing arts center) could still exclude those employees if it showed that the employees’ activity significantly interfered with the use of the property or was otherwise justified by other legitimate business reasons. The Board stated its new rule as follows:

[W]e hold that a property owner may exclude from its property off-duty contractor employees seeking access to the property to engage in Section 7 activity unless (i) those employees work both regularly and exclusively on the property and (ii) the property owner fails to show that they have one or more reasonable nontrespassory alternative means to communicate their message. Further, we will consider contractor employees to work “regularly” on the owner’s property only if the contractor regularly conducts business or performs services there. In addition, we will consider contractor employees to work “exclusively” on the owner’s property if they perform all of their work for that contractor on the property, even if they also work a second job elsewhere for another employer.

There are several important aspects to this rule. First, because it’s using the Supreme Court’s definition of “alternate means” from Lechmere, what the Board is really saying is “virtually never.” If you’re not regularly immersed in labor law, let me assure you that this is not an exaggeration. The Court has made clear that “reasonable alternate means” means any means to contact employees, no matter how ineffective. By way of example, the Court expressly cited that off-shore oil rigs or remote lumber camps might qualify, although with the better communications that exist now I’m not so sure that would even do it anymore.

Although it relies heavily on Lechmere, it completely mangles the reasoning behind the decision. The Supreme Court's holding in that case that non-employees (typically union organizers) almost always lack the right to access the employer's property for NLRA-protected activity was based on the premise that those non-employees only have an "indirect" Section 7 right to communicate with employees (a holding often, and justly, criticized, but one that I'm accepting as current law.) But, as McFerran’s dissent here and the Board in New York New Yorkemphasized, the "non-employees" in Bexararen't in the same position as the non-employee union organizers in Lechmere. These are employees of the employer with whom there is a labor dispute. And the only way for them to access their workplace is to access the third-party's property. In other words, these employees have a "direct" Section 7 interest under Lechmere.

This decision will have a significant impact, which I don’t always say (many reporters have heard me utter something along the lines of “although the labor law community, including me, may be up in arms about X decision, I’m not sure it will have that widespread of an impact . . . ."). But this decision substantially limits employees’ ability to access their worksite for NLRA activity if their employer leases the worksite. In other words, such employees may have effectively no option to handbill, picket, or engaging in any other NLRA-protected purposes at work. Think, for a moment, how many workplaces this impacts. Every mall, shopping center, apartment building with commercial space, etc.  (heck, the number of Starbucks alone that fit the bill boggles the mind). Then think about employees who work at multiple sites, like janitors. None of them will be able to access the workplace to leaflet or engage in other protected conduct unless the property owner agrees. And few will in the face of resistance from the employer/lease who is paying rent.

In addition to drastically minimizing employees’ NLRA rights, it doesn’t make much sense from even a property rights view. If you're a property owner--say a mall--who leases to businesses, you should expect your property to be used for valid businesses uses. And those uses should include employee activity that is protected but the NLRA. Otherwise, what's to stop union-phobic employers from ensuring that they only lease their worksites from third-parties who will do the employers' bidding by excluding all off-duty employees engaging in NLRA activity? Or an employer with multiple worksite could ensure that its employees work at least once at another site, thereby violating the “exclusively” requirement (like the symphony employees here, who sometimes perform elsewhere).

Finally, this is part of a larger trend of elevating property interests above all others. Not a new trend to be sure (the Lochner-era being the most notable), but one that has picked up speed in recent decades. It's troubling, not only because there's no reason why property rights--which derive entirely from state law--should trump federal statutory rights. But also because they invariably, and no doubt intentionally, favor wealthy property owners over employees and others who are not so financially fortunate.

If you’re interested in this topic, you can read more about the background of Lechmere and other cases in my articles, Communication Breakdown: Reviving the Role of Discourse in Regulating Employee Collective Action and Taking State Property Rights Out of Federal Labor Law, or a more modern take on the tension between NLRA rights and property rights in these pieces: Worker Collective Action in the Digital Age; The Silicon Bullet: Will the Internet Kill the NLRA?; and Amicus Curae Brief to the NLRB in Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino.  As you can tell, this topic hits home for me (I actually excluded several other pieces). And I'm still waiting for the shoe to drop in Rio All-Suites, which deals with employees' use of its employer's electronic communications systems.

-Jeff Hirsch