Ruling Lets Firms Bar Union E-mail

[Omaha Steve]

Source: NY Times

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that employers have the right to prohibit workers from using the company’s e-mail system to send out union-related messages, a decision that could hamper communications between labor unions and their membership.

In a 3-to-2 ruling on Friday, the labor board held that it was legal for employers to bar union-related e-mail so long as employers had a policy barring employees from sending e-mail for “non-job-related solicitations” for any outside organization.

The ruling is a significant setback to the nation’s labor unions, which argued that e-mail systems have become a modern-day gathering place where employees should be able to communicate freely with co-workers to discuss work-related matters of mutual concern.

The ruling involved The Register-Guard, a newspaper in Eugene, Ore., and e-mail messages sent in 2000 by Susi Prozanski, a newspaper employee who was president of the Newspaper Guild’s unit there. She sent an e-mail message about a union rally and two others urging employees to wear green to show support for the union’s position in contract negotiations.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/business/22cnd-labor.html?hp

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. use the company e-mail to discuss union issues? NO THANK YOU.

sorry, but no e-mail system is secure. To the contrary, the administrator can read everything. I would NOT want union discussions put on a company e-mail. There are other solutions, not as easy, but they exist.

[YankmeCrankme]

5. To discuss Union business, of course not, but to use it to get info to members?

It's the same as using a message board in the workplace to post union news. Should that be illegal too?

[ColbertWatcher]

2. Does it include texting? Phone calls? n/t

[ProudDad]

3. To my Union Brothers and Sisters...

Use a web based email client...harder to trace, nearly impossible to read...

Get a free account -- hotmail, etc. and only use a web based email client - NOT your office email pathway (probably that POS from M$ -- Exchange).



Tell the boss (silently) to, in the words of the immortal dick (head) cheney, "Go Fuck Yourself!"

[kirby]

7. Hmm...

Be sure the email server provides secure encrypted communications (https) or it is very trivial for the employer to read what you are doing on the website.

Also, hotmail is owned my M$, FYI.

[Fierce]

4. Then the company shouldn't use it to update people

on management's side of labor negotiations.

And, A UNION ISN'T AN OUTSIDE ORGANIZATION! IT IS AN ORGANIZATION MADE UP OF EMPLOYEES! INSIDE THE COMPANY! ARGH! The argument that a union is some sort of scary outside "third party" shoving its nose into relations is just stupid.

[aquart]

6. Well, it's MANAGEMENT's position.

And BushCo never takes any other side.

[LiberalFighter]

8. They shouldn't but they have the right

Management can force the workers to attend meetings and view videos even if they present lies to the employees.

[Toots]

9. “non-job-related solicitations”

I would think that Union business is indeed "job related". How could it not be?