Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-15-01010/USCOURTS-caDC-15-01010-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East
Intervenor for Respondent
Care One at Madison Avenue, LLC
Petitioner
National Labor Relations Board
Respondent

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued May 13, 2016 Decided August 12, 2016 

No. 15-1010 

CARE ONE AT MADISON AVENUE, LLC, DOING BUSINESS AS 

CARE ONE AT MADISON AVENUE, 

PETITIONER

v. 

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, 

RESPONDENT

1199 SEIU UNITED HEALTHCARE WORKERS EAST, 

INTERVENOR

Consolidated with 15-1025 

On Petition for Review and Cross-Application 

 for Enforcement of an Order of 

 the National Labor Relations Board 

Erin E. Murphy argued the cause for petitioner. With her 

on the briefs were Paul D. Clement, C. Harker Rhodes, IV, 

and Andrew N. Ferguson. 

Milakshmi V. Rajapakse, Attorney, National Labor 

Relations Board, argued the cause for respondent. With her 

on the brief were Richard F. Griffin, Jr., General Counsel, 

USCA Case #15-1010 Document #1630008 Filed: 08/12/2016 Page 1 of 20
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Jennifer Abruzzo, Deputy General Counsel, John H. 

Ferguson, Associate General Counsel, Linda Dreeben, 

Deputy Associate General Counsel, Robert J. Englehart, 

Supervisory Attorney, and Douglas Callahan, Attorney. 

Katherine H. Hansen argued the cause for intervenor. 

With her on the brief was William S. Massey. 

Before: ROGERS, PILLARD and WILKINS, Circuit Judges. 

 Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge PILLARD. 

 

 PILLARD, Circuit Judge: The National Labor Relations 

Board (the Board) determined that petitioner Care One at 

Madison Avenue (Care One or the Company) committed a 

series of unfair labor practices in an effort to prevent the 

certification of a union at its nursing home and rehabilitation 

facility in Morristown, New Jersey. After the union lost a 

representation election in March 2012, it filed objections and 

charges of unfair labor practices with the Board. The Board 

held that Care One had interfered with employees’ protected 

activity and discriminated against union-eligible employees in 

violation of the National Labor Relations Act (the Act) by 

instituting a system-wide, discretionary benefits increase 

shortly before a scheduled representation election and 

denying the increase to the union-eligible employees. The 

Board also concluded that the company unlawfully interfered 

with its employees’ right to organize by distributing to 

employees eligible to vote in the upcoming election a 

threatening leaflet associating unionization with job loss; 

presenting a slideshow depicting employees, without their 

consent, as if they supported the Company’s antiunion 

campaign; and issuing a post-election memorandum 

reiterating the company’s workplace violence policy, which 

the Board concluded could reasonably be read in context to 

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threaten reprisal for protected union activity. Care One at 

Madison Ave., LLC d/b/a Care One at Madison Ave. & 1199 

SEIU, United Healthcare Workers E., 361 N.L.R.B. No. 159, 

2014 WL 7339612 (Dec. 16, 2014). 

We deny Care One’s petition for review and grant the 

Board’s cross-application for enforcement of its order on each 

of the charges. 

I. Background 

The Company’s Morristown, New Jersey, nursing home, 

Care One at Madison Avenue, is part of a network of 

approximately twenty nursing and rehabilitation facilities that 

Care One Management runs across the state. Employees at 

those facilities share a common health insurance plan. 

Effective January 1, 2012, Care One Management modified 

its company-wide plan, reducing benefits and increasing costs 

for its employees. 

As Care One Management was eliminating benefits, 

employees at the Madison Avenue facility were organizing. 

On January 23, 2012, 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers 

East (the Union) filed a petition for an election to represent 

full-time and regular part-time non-professional employees at 

that location. 

Meanwhile, Care One decided it would reverse cuts it 

had made to its health insurance plan, thereby restoring many 

benefits to their pre-2012 levels. The Company announced 

the restoration of benefits in a March 5, 2012, memorandum, 

just three weeks shy of the scheduled representation election, 

with the restoration to become effective the day of the 

election. Care One withheld the March 5 memorandum only 

from union-eligible employees without any explanation, and 

did not tell the excluded employees when or whether their 

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benefits would be restored. Care One facilities administrator 

George Arezzo, however, posted the memorandum at the 

Madison Avenue facility where union-eligible employees 

could—and did—see it. When the excluded employees asked 

Arezzo about the benefits, he refused to discuss the matter 

with them. The sole reason the Company offers for its 

targeted exclusion of the union-eligible employees is “the 

pendency of the representation election.” J.A. 93, 187. 

 In the months leading up to the election, Care One 

campaigned against the Union. The Company distributed 

leaflets to the Union-eligible employees, which told them to 

“Get the Facts!” J.A. 98. One of those leaflets directed 

employees to “think about what you need to do when you 

vote” and listed a series of questions for employees to 

consider, including, “Do you want to give outsiders the power 

to jeopardize your job by putting you out on strike?” Id.

(emphasis in original). The answer, the company emphasized 

in bold, oversized type, was “NO.” Id. 

On March 21, two days before the election, the Company 

held a mandatory meeting for all union-eligible employees. 

At the meeting, Arezzo made the Company’s final argument 

against the Union. He told the employees that Care One was 

a “family” that would work better together without a union. 

J.A. 41. At the end of the meeting, Arezzo showed the 

employees a slideshow that reiterated the “we are family” 

theme. The slideshow included images of many of the unioneligible employees. Care One management had represented 

when it took the employees’ photographs that they were for a 

Valentine’s Day activity, a patient-care program, and a 

display case in the common space of the facility. 

Management never sought or received consent from 

employees to use their photographs in the antiunion campaign 

slideshow, nor did it make any disclaimer that the 

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presentation did not necessarily reflect the views of the 

employees depicted. In the slideshow, the images of 

employees were set against a recording of Sister Sledge 

singing “We are Family.” When the slideshow concluded, 

Arezzo reportedly said to the employees, “Please vote no, 

give management a chance, we’re a family, we’re a team.” 

J.A. 55. 

When the Union held the election two days later, fiftyseven employees voted for union representation and fiftyeight voted against. 

On March 26, three days after the election, Arezzo posted 

a memorandum entitled “Teamwork and Dignity and 

Respect” on the employee bulletin board. Arezzo’s 

memorandum addressed the Madison Avenue facility’s 

employees: “Now that the NLRB Election is behind us,” he 

wrote, “I was hoping that everyone would put their 

differences behind them and pull together as a team.” J.A. 

124. Arezzo asserted in the memorandum that he had heard 

that “a few employees are not treating their fellow team 

members with respect and dignity” and noted “disturbing 

reports that some of our team members have been 

threatened.” Id. He went on to say that “employees have a 

right to make up their own minds regarding the union” and 

that he “respect[ed] the right employees have to be for or 

against the union,” id., but cautioned that those rights “do not 

give anyone the right to threaten or intimidate another team 

member, for any reason,” id. Arezzo attached to the 

memorandum Care One’s pre-existing Workplace Violence 

Prevention policy. There was in fact no evidence of any 

threats or intimidation, or even reports thereof, leaving 

employees to wonder what communications or activities 

surrounding the union representation election the management 

thought the referenced disciplinary policy encompassed. 

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The Union filed several objections to the unsuccessful 

election. The Board upheld most of those objections and 

ordered a new election. Care One at Madison Avenue, Case 

22-RC-072946, 2012 WL 4049006 (N.L.R.B. Sept. 13, 2012). 

The Union also filed several unfair labor practice charges 

against Care One, prompting the Board’s Acting General 

Counsel to bring the charges at issue in this case. The second 

representation election awaits the resolution of these unfair 

labor practice charges. 

The parties waived an in-person hearing and instead 

submitted a stipulated record. Based on that record, an ALJ 

found that Care One’s challenged antiunion conduct before 

and immediately following the representation election 

violated sections 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(3) of the Act. 29 U.S.C. 

§ 158(a)(1) & (a)(3). In a December 16, 2014, Decision and 

Order, the Board upheld the ALJ’s findings and conclusions, 

with the exception that Member Johnson dissented from the 

Board’s holding that the post-election memorandum could 

reasonably be read as unlawfully threatening protected 

activity. 

Care One petitioned this court for review of the Board’s 

order, the Board cross-applied for enforcement, and the Union 

intervened in support of the Board. We have jurisdiction over 

the petition and application under sections 10(e) and 10(f) of 

the Act. 29 U.S.C. §§ 160(e), (f). 

II. Analysis 

When workers begin to organize, their employer may 

take many steps to convince them not to form a union. But no 

employer has completely free rein. The National Labor 

Relations Act, interpreted in decades of precedent of the 

Board and the courts, strikes a balance between the 

prerogatives of employers and the rights of employees. 

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Because “the NLRB has the primary responsibility for 

developing and applying national labor policy,” NLRB v. 

Curtin Matheson Sci., Inc., 494 U.S. 775, 786 (1990), we will 

“uphold the Board’s legal determinations so long as they are 

neither arbitrary nor inconsistent with established law,” 

Tualatin Elec., Inc. v. NLRB, 253 F.3d 714, 717 (D.C. Cir. 

2001). On questions of fact, the Board’s findings are 

“conclusive” if “supported by substantial evidence on the 

record considered as a whole.” 29 U.S.C. § 160(e); see 

Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U.S. 474, 490 (1951). 

Applying those standards, we grant the Board’s 

application for enforcement of its order. 

a. Pre-election Benefit Grant to All Except Union-Eligible 

Employees 

An employer must refrain from interfering with or 

discouraging the exercise of protected labor rights by either 

granting or withholding a benefit. Whether interference is 

accomplished by dangling a carrot or brandishing a stick, the 

Supreme Court has long counseled that it is interference all 

the same. See NLRB v. Great Dane Trailers, Inc., 388 U.S. 

26, 32 (1967); NLRB v. Exchange Parts Co., 375 U.S. 405, 

409-10 (1964). What the Act requires is that the employer 

make its benefits decisions “precisely as it would if the union 

were not on the scene.” Federated Logistics & Operations v. 

NLRB, 400 F.3d 920, 927 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (quoting Perdue 

Farms, Inc. Cookin’ Good Division v. NLRB, 144 F.3d 830, 

836 (D.C. Cir. 1998)). Section 7 of the NLRA protects a 

range of employee rights to form, join, and support labor 

unions and engage in bargaining and other concerted activities 

to advance their interests in the workplace. 29 U.S.C. § 157. 

An employer may not use benefit eligibility as a means of 

discouraging employees from participating in a representation 

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election. See 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(1). And it may not, without 

valid reason, treat employees differently in the promise or 

offer of important employee benefits based on the employees’ 

participation in protected activities. See 29 U.S.C. 

§ 158(a)(3). 

When Care One timed the announcement of its 

discretionary, one-time, system-wide reinstatement of a 

valued healthcare benefit just three weeks before a scheduled 

representation election, withheld that benefit from only its 

union-eligible employees, and offered “the pendency of the 

representation election” as its sole reason, it violated the Act. 

The Company thereby discouraged union membership in 

violation of section 8(a)(1), and discriminated against unioneligible employees in regard to a term of employment, in 

violation of section 8(a)(3). 

Substantial evidence supports the Board’s conclusion that 

the way in which Care One reinstated the health plan 

unlawfully interfered with its employees’ right to organize in 

violation of Section 8(a)(1). As we have explained, “an 

employer may not withhold a wage increase that would have 

been granted but for a union organizing campaign.” 

Federated Logistics, 400 F.3d at 927. By the same token, 

“implementation of a benefit before a scheduled election, . . . 

without a showing of business justification, has itself been 

deemed evidence of improper motive.” Pedro’s, Inc. v. 

NLRB, 652 F.2d 1005, 1009 n.11 (D.C. Cir. 1981). Section 

8(a)(1) prohibits an employer from conferring or withholding 

a benefit “with the express purpose of impinging upon 

[employees’] freedom of choice for or against unionization” 

where such action “is reasonably calculated to have that 

effect.” Exchange Parts, 375 U.S. at 409. 

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The circumstances here are telling: Three weeks before 

the scheduled election, the Company decided to grant a 

system-wide benefit, but created a targeted exclusion of the 

union-eligible employees. And, according to the parties’ Joint 

Stipulation of Facts, “[i]t was because of the pendency of the 

representation election” that the Employer excluded eligible 

voters from its March 5, 2012, notification to all other 

employees that “they would receive the improvements in the 

health insurance plan and that their employee contributions 

would be reduced on March 23, 2012.” J.A. 93. There is thus 

no dispute that Care One would have extended the benefit to 

its union eligible employees were it not for their protected 

activity. 

The particulars of the timing further support the Board’s 

finding of unlawful motive. The Company had eliminated the 

benefits months earlier, and its decision to reinstate them was 

a one-time, wholly discretionary choice. Employees had been 

objecting to the benefits cut all along, yet Care One chose 

early March to announce its decision to restore them. There is 

no evidence that the timing was part of any regularly 

scheduled benefits open-season or annual renewal, for 

example; the record is devoid of any legitimate business 

rationale for the Company’s chosen timing. That timing is 

particularly indefensible given that the Company awarded the 

benefits retroactive to January, meaning that waiting until 

March saved it no money, and making the announcement 

before rather than after the election did not ensure earlier 

coverage to its employees. 

The timing and context, the exclusion of the unioneligible employees, and the admitted attention to the 

upcoming election provide substantial evidence to support the 

Board’s determination that Care One unlawfully sought to 

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induce the employees to reject the union in violation of 

section 8(a)(1). 

Substantial evidence also supports the Board’s 

conclusion that, by discriminating with respect to a term of 

employment, Care One unlawfully discouraged union 

membership in violation of section 8(a)(3). A showing of a 

targeted withholding of a significant employee benefit only 

from those employees who are in the process of exercising or 

are about to exercise protected rights may, without more, 

“bear[] ‘its own indicia of intent’” to discourage employee 

exercise of those rights. See Great Dane, 388 U.S. at 33 

(quoting NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U.S. 221, 228 

(1963)). Where the Board has shown that the “employer 

engaged in discriminatory conduct which could have 

adversely affected employee rights to some extent,” the 

burden shifts to the employer “to establish that he was 

motivated by legitimate objectives since proof of motivation 

is most accessible to him.” Id. at 34 (emphasis in original). 

Because Care One has made no attempt to show that the 

exclusion of union-eligible employees from its system-wide 

restoration of benefits was motivated by any legitimate 

business objective, the Company failed to meet that burden. 

 Care One argues that its conduct cannot amount to an 

unfair labor practice because it was merely attempting to 

navigate in good faith what it views as the Board’s 

“incoherent jurisprudence.” Reply Br. of Petitioner 1. The 

Company insists that, had it included its union-eligible 

employees in the benefits increase, it would have risked a 

Board determination that it was seeking to buy the 

employees’ votes with the improved benefits in violation of 

the Act as interpreted in Exchange Parts, 375 U.S. 405. The 

Board’s decision in Noah’s New York Bagels, 324 N.L.R.B. 

266, 272 (1997), instructed the company to withhold the 

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benefits increase from the union-eligible employees, Care 

One argues, while the Board’s decision in In Re Noah’s Bay 

Area Bagels, LLC, 331 N.L.R.B. 188, 190-91 (2000), required 

that it grant them the increase. Care One vividly complains 

that the Board adheres to “Janus-faced” precedent—a 

“‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ doctrine”—that 

puts the Company in an untenable position, Br. of Petitioner 

26, 28, 32, and that all it was trying to do was to maintain the 

status quo, id. at 23. 

In particular, Care One contends that the Board’s 

“contradictory precedent” makes it impossible for employers 

to make benefits changes during the pendency of a 

representation election, id. at 22-23, but neither the Board’s 

case law nor ours creates the quandary Care One describes. 

Contrary to Care One’s contentions, the Act does not require 

a company facing a union election to freeze its operations. 

An employer may make regularly scheduled benefits changes 

if it does so without treating employees differently based on 

their participation in protected activities, and without any 

motive of inducing employees to vote against the union. See 

Pedro’s, Inc., 652 F.2d at 1008. And where its legitimate 

business purpose so directs, an employer may move ahead 

with even an unscheduled, discretionary benefits change in 

the pendency of a representation election; what it must avoid 

is doing so for the purpose of attempting to influence 

employees’ votes. See Exchange Parts, 375 U.S. at 409. But 

where, as here, an employer, without any legitimate 

explanation, schedules a discretionary, one-time benefit 

restoration just before an election and excludes from the 

benefit only the union-eligible employees, that employer 

reasonably may be viewed as attempting to discourage 

eligible employees’ support for the union. See Perdue Farms, 

144 F.3d at 837.

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It simply is not the case, as the Company argues, that the 

Board has applied a per se rule that granting or withholding a 

discretionary benefits increase once an election is scheduled 

violates the Act, irrespective of the employer’s motive. In all 

cases, the question is whether the employer’s benefit decision 

was made for legitimate business reasons or because of 

protected activity. Under established law, an employer facing 

a representation election may, for example, continue to 

implement a benefit it had previously planned to offer its 

employees before they began organizing. See Pedro’s, Inc., 

652 F.2d at 1008. An employer may have a legitimate reason 

in some circumstances for conferring a company-wide benefit 

on its employees, including union-eligible employees, during 

the pendency of an election, in which case extending the 

benefit to union-eligible employees would not be a coercive 

offer in violation of the Act. See, e.g., Noah’s Bay Area 

Bagels, 331 N.L.R.B. at 190. There is, however, good reason 

for the Board’s caution that the “more prudent course” is to 

not grant a discretionary benefits increase just before a union 

election. Noah’s New York Bagels, 324 NLRB at 272. Where 

an employer lacks a legitimate business reason for giving a 

benefit in the run-up to an election, a brief delay until after the 

election is a simple way to guard against a finding that the 

employer timed the announcement of the benefit in an effort 

to influence employees’ voting behavior. 

The Company’s only proffered justification for omitting 

the union-eligible employees from the benefit was its legally 

erroneous view that the Board’s precedent so required. But 

reliance on “dubious legal advice” does not excuse an 

employer’s discrimination. See St. Francis Fed’n of Nurses 

& Health Prof’ls v. NLRB, 729 F.2d 844, 852 (D.C. Cir. 

1984); 800 River Rd. Operating Co. v. NLRB, 784 F.3d 902, 

910 n.5 (3d Cir. 2015). Unlike in 800 River Road, where the 

Board had made no findings as to the employer’s motivations, 

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784 F.2d at 907-08, the Board found here that the sole reason 

Care One withheld the benefit increase from the unioneligible employees and no others was to dissuade employees 

from voting for the union in the imminent election. 

In view of the applicable legal principles and the record 

in its entirety, we hold that substantial evidence supports the 

Board’s conclusion that Care One’s announcement of its 

decision to selectively restore popular benefits was an effort 

to discourage union membership in violation of section 

8(a)(1) and was discrimination against union-eligible 

employees in violation of section 8(a)(3). 

b. Misleading Employer Leaflet 

The record also contains substantial evidence to support 

the Board’s conclusion that employees would reasonably 

understand as a threat in violation of section 8(a)(1) the 

leaflet’s claim that the union could call a strike and 

“jeopardize your job.” Section 7 protects employees’ rights to 

engage in concerted activity in the workplace, including their 

right to strike. An employer violates section 8(a)(1)’s bar on 

interfering with employees’ exercise of their section 7 rights 

when it makes “coercive statements that threaten employees 

with job loss or plant closure in retaliation for protected union 

activities.” Progressive Elec., Inc. v. NLRB, 453 F.3d 538, 

544 (D.C. Cir. 2006). 

Care One argues that its leaflet instructing employees that 

striking could “jeopardize [their] jobs” was accurate and 

therefore not a “threat of reprisal” prohibited by section 8(c). 

The Act recognizes an employer’s prerogative to 

communicate to its employees “any of [the employer’s] 

general views about unionism or any of [its] specific views 

about a particular union” only insofar as the communications 

do not contain a “threat of reprisal or force or promise of 

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benefit.” NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U.S. 575, 618 

(1969) (quoting 29 U.S.C. § 158(c)); see also Progressive 

Elec., 453 F.3d at 544. An employer’s freedom to “make a 

prediction as to the precise effects” it expects unionization to 

have on the business and its employees is limited to 

predictions based on “objective fact[s]” about events beyond 

the employer’s control, or a “management decision already 

arrived at” before the unionization effort. Gissel Packing, 

395 U.S. at 618. Any such employer prediction must also be 

“consistent with the law.” Eagle Comtronics, Inc., 263 

N.L.R.B. 515, 516 (1982). An employer may truthfully 

inform its employees of their rights and duties, and, in 

particular, is not required to “fully detail[] the protections” 

that a striking employee enjoys in the event of an economic 

strike. Id. at 516; see Laidlaw Corp., 171 N.L.R.B. 1366, 

1369-70 (1968). 

 Care One’s leaflet violated those principles because it 

failed accurately to characterize the implications of a strike 

for employees’ jobs. The leaflet said, “Do you want to give 

outsiders the power to jeopardize your job by putting you out 

on strike?” J.A. 183. The leaflet overstated the risks to 

workers on economic strike, who retain important job 

protections: If their jobs have not been filled by 

replacements, employees are entitled to full reinstatement 

immediately after a strike, or, if their positions have been 

filled, “upon the departure of replacements.” Laidlaw, 171 

N.L.R.B. at 1369-70. They “remain employees” even where 

“their positions are filled by permanent replacements” as long 

as the striking employees “unconditionally apply for 

reinstatement.” Id. Striking employees are also entitled to 

retain their pre-strike seniority when they return to active 

status. See, e.g., Olin Mathieson Chem. Corp. v. NLRB, 232 

F.2d 158, 160 (4th Cir. 1956), aff’d, 352 U.S. 1020 (1957); 

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Republic Steel Corp. v. NLRB, 114 F.2d 820, 821 (3d Cir. 

1940). 

The Board’s distinction here between Care One’s legally 

inaccurate claim that striking employees risk loss of a job and 

the permissible explanation that striking employees risk loss 

of job status may seem picayune, but we do not gainsay the 

Board’s judgment of the significance of that distinction to 

employees exercising their protected right to form a union. In 

prior cases, the Board has found that employer statements that 

informed employees that striking could jeopardize their “job 

status” were accurate, and thus lawful, but the Board 

underscored that an employee’s “job status” is distinct from 

her “job.” When the Board in Rivers Bend, 350 N.L.R.B. 

184, 185 (2007), for example, held that the employer’s 

statement that hiring striker replacements “puts each striker’s 

continued job status in jeopardy” was not a threat of 

termination in violation of Section 8(a)(1), the Board 

specifically emphasized that the employer “did not say that 

replaced strikers would permanently lose their jobs.” Id.; see 

Novi American, Inc., 309 N.L.R.B. 544, 545-46 (1992). 

The Board reasonably concluded that the Company’s 

leaflet was not truthful and could reasonably be construed as 

threatening in its blanket statement that striking could cost 

employees their job. The Board accordingly was justified in 

determining that the leaflet violated employees’ section 

8(a)(1) rights. 

c. Captive-Audience Meeting and Misleading Slideshow 

Substantial evidence also supports the Board’s 

conclusion that the Company’s slideshow violated the Act. 

Care One’s facilities administrator, George Arezzo, aired the 

slideshow at a mandatory, pre-election meeting for unioneligible employees. The slideshow cast many of those 

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employees as supportive of the company’s antiunion message, 

even though the Company never verified the employees’ 

views or obtained their consent to be so depicted.

Because employees have the right to organize and 

advocate organization, remain neutral, or support an 

employer’s antiunion campaign, an employer may not 

attribute an antiunion slogan to its employees without 

obtaining the employees’ freely given permission to do so. 

See Allegheny Ludlum, 333 N.L.R.B. 734, 744 (2001). In 

general, “an employer who has not solicited employees to 

participate in a campaign videotape” may “nevertheless use 

their images in the videotape without incurring Section 

8(a)(1) liability” only if the video, when “viewed as a whole, 

does not convey the message that the employees depicted 

therein either support or oppose union representation.” Id. at 

743 (emphasis omitted). There is no “blanket requirement 

that employers must obtain employees’ explicit consent 

before including their images in campaign videotapes.” Id. at 

744. But an employer may not without permission use an 

employee’s image to impute to the employee an opinion about 

unionization. 

This is not a case of an employer displaying employees’ 

images without “indicat[ing] the position of the employees on 

the subject of unionization.” Id. at 744. The slideshow 

included images of happy, union-eligible employees making 

heart signs and smiling together, accompanied by the song 

“We Are Family.” See J.A. 189. Arezzo had repeatedly tied 

the refrain of that song—“we are family”—to the antiunion 

message he was promoting. Id. The Board concluded, based 

on substantial evidence, that the context, purpose, and 

message of the slideshow that Arezzo showed to Care One 

employees at the mandatory March 21 meeting implied that 

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the depicted employees opposed unionization—a depiction 

that interfered with those employees’ section 7 rights. 

Care One argues that the Board erred by looking only to 

whether the slideshow was “part of the employer’s 

campaign,” without specifically determining that the 

slideshow ascribed a pro-union view to employees. Br. of 

Petitioner 52 (quoting December 16, 2014, Decision & Order, 

J.A. 190). But the Board specifically rejected that argument. 

It compared Care One’s slideshow to one in Sony Corp.,

which the Board held would cause a viewer to “reasonably 

conclude that the laughing and smiling photographs of unit 

employees whose faces appear during the film . . . were meant 

to show support for the antiunion message of the film as a 

whole.” J.A. 190 (citing Sony Corp. of Am., 313 N.L.R.B. 

420, 429 (1993)). 

The ALJ’s finding that “there was no explicit antiunion 

message” in the slideshow itself, J.A. 190, does not detract 

from the Board’s determination that, in the context of 

Arezzo’s pitch, the implicit antiunion message was 

unmistakable. The “we are family” slogan was pervasive in 

the slideshow, and Arezzo reiterated it afterwards and used it 

to underscore his antiunion message. See id. The Board 

found that “there were unambiguous ‘vote no’ messages 

communicated to employees both before and after” the 

slideshow was shown, and found that the slideshow formed 

part of “the Employer’s crusade to encourage employees to 

vote against union representation.” Id. The findings that Care 

One’s slideshow attributed an antiunion message to the 

employees pictured are supported by substantial evidence. 

d. Memo on Peaceful and Respectful Employee Interaction 

Finally, we hold that the Board’s conclusion that the 

memorandum Arezzo posted three days after the union 

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election violated section 8(a)(1) is supported by substantial 

evidence. An employer “violates Section 8(a)(1) when it 

maintains a work rule that reasonably tends to chill employees 

in the exercise of their Section 7 rights.” Lutheran Heritage 

Village-Livonia, 343 N.L.R.B. 646, 646 (2004). The parties 

agree that Care One’s pre-existing Workplace Violence 

Prevention Policy (the Policy), and the memorandum Arezzo 

posted on March 26 attaching and referencing that policy, did 

not explicitly prohibit any protected employee activity. The 

question is whether Care One’s memorandum reiterating the 

anti-violence policy was, in context, unlawful because “(1) 

employees would reasonably construe the language to 

prohibit Section 7 activity; (2) the rule was promulgated in 

response to union activity; or (3) the rule has been applied to 

restrict the exercise of Section 7 rights.” Id. at 647. The 

Board found the memorandum unlawful for the first two 

reasons. 

The Board concluded that a reasonable employee could 

read the memorandum to, in effect, expand the existing 

Workplace Violence Prevention Policy so that it would newly 

subject employees to discipline merely for failing to treat 

other people in the workplace with “dignity and respect” with 

regard to their stance on unionization. We find adequate 

record support for the Board’s determination that the memo, 

read in context, could reasonably be understood as instituting 

a new policy of disciplining protected Section 7 activity. 

We emphasize that an exhortation like Arezzo’s urging 

employees to behave with “dignity and respect” would not be 

unlawful on its own, but for the unlawful implication the 

Board identified in Arezzo’s linking that caution to the 

disciplinary policy and the referenced protected conduct. We 

also underscore that the underlying Policy itself has not been 

shown to be unlawful in any aspect. Cf. Adtranz ABB 

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Daimler-Benz Transp., NA v. NLRB, 253 F.3d 19, 25–28 

(D.C. Cir. 2001). We have made clear that employers have 

the prerogative of “demanding employees comply with 

generally accepted notions of civility.” See id. at 27. Nothing 

in our decision to sustain the Board’s order here should be 

read to discourage employers from insisting that people treat 

one another with dignity and respect in the workplace. 

Nevertheless, the Board had sufficient basis on which to 

conclude that a reasonable employee could understand the 

memorandum as not merely an entreaty to respectful 

behavior, but as a warning that Care One would discipline 

protected activity such as occurred during the “NLRB 

election.” J.A. 175. In the context in which it was issued, 

Arezzo’s memorandum was reasonably susceptible of that 

broader interpretation. The memorandum emphasized with 

explicit reference to the just-concluded election that the 

employees should “let go” of their differences and start 

treating one another with “dignity and respect,” or risk being 

in violation of the attached Policy. J.A. 175-76. That Policy 

expresses Care One’s commitment to “maintaining a safe, 

healthy and secure work environment, and preventing 

violence in the workplace.” J.A. 176. It provides that “[a]cts 

or threats of violence, including intimidation, harassment 

and/or coercion” against anyone on the premises “will not be 

tolerated,” and contemplates discipline “up to and including 

termination of employment and/or legal action as 

appropriate.” Id. 

The critical fact, as found by the Board, is that “there is 

no record evidence . . . that any threats actually occurred.” 

J.A. 177. Given that nobody had engaged in the “violence, 

including intimidation, harassment and/or coercion” that the 

Policy targets, a reasonable employee might make sense of 

the otherwise baffling recirculation of that Policy as aimed at 

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something else. Indeed, the memorandum was explicit about 

its subject: the organizing campaign. Because the memo 

followed directly on the heels of that concededly peaceful—if 

vigorously debated and contested—campaign, a reasonable 

employee could understand Care One to be saying that taking 

a position in the workplace regarding union rights is 

“disrespectful,” threatening, or harassing to co-workers in a 

way that could warrant invoking the disciplinary policy. That 

the memorandum on its face is not limited to pro-union 

activity is beside the point. Care One’s violation was to 

respond to peaceful workplace controversy over unionization 

by reiterating its anti-harassment policy in a way that, in 

context, could reasonably be understood as extending that 

policy to protected activity. 

We have made clear that it would be “simply 

preposterous” to bar an employer from imposing “a broad 

prophylactic rule against abusive and threatening language,” 

Adtranz, 253 F.3d at 28, but the Board found that Care One 

went further. In a context devoid of any of the conduct the 

Policy legitimately addresses—threats of violence, 

intimidation, harassment or coercion—the Board had 

substantial evidence upon which to conclude that Arezzo’s 

memorandum could reasonably be understood to presage 

application of the disciplinary policy to the protected activity 

to which Arezzo’s memorandum explicitly referred. 

* * * 

 We therefore deny Care One’s petition for review and 

grant the Board’s cross-application for enforcement with 

respect to the unfair labor practices found by the Board. 

So ordered. 

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