Opinion ID: 346940
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Employee-Only Working Areas.

Text: 33 The Board's decision and order also find the Hospital's no-solicitation rule overbroad as it applies to employee-only working areas. The Board freely admits that this position is a reversal of the rule announced in Summit Nursing and Guyon Valley, supra, but submits it is free to change existing policy to conform with its evolving experience in the health care field. In light of the Supreme Court's explicit language in NLRB v. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U.S. 251, 95 S.Ct. 959, 43 L.Ed.2d 171, we are compelled to accept this position. 34 We agree that (the Board's) earlier precedents do not impair the validity of the Board's (present) construction. . . . To hold that the Board's earlier decisions froze the development of this important aspect of the national labor law would misconceive the nature of administrative decision making. . . . 35 . . . It is the province of the Board, not the courts, to determine whether or not the need exists in light of changing industrial practices and the Board's cumulative experience in dealing with labor-management relations. . . . (W)hile (the Board's construction) may not be required by the Act, (it) is at least permissible under it, and insofar as the Board's application of that meaning engages in the difficult and delicate responsibility of reconciling conflicting interests of labor and management, the balance struck by the Board is subject to limited judicial review. 36 Id. at 265-67, 95 S.Ct. at 967, 968. In the present case the decision to allow solicitation in employee-only working areas involves areas where by definition there is no commingling of patients and employees. Thus, the Board's decision involves situations comparable to those found in the normal labor-management dispute and concerns matters within the Board's acknowledged field of expertise. Moreover, although the balance struck by the Board may not be expressly required by the Act, it is certainly permissible and is therefore subject to only limited judicial review. We are accordingly compelled to agree with the Board's determination that the Hospital failed to demonstrate any special circumstances surrounding these employee-only working areas that would justify a departure from the general rule against restrictions on solicitation in working areas. 8 In light of the fact the Hospital has found it unnecessary to restrict other subjects of conversation in employee-only work areas, 9 we cannot conclude the decision of the Board to allow discussion of unionization in these areas is unreasonable. We therefore grant enforcement of that part of the Board's order permitting solicitation in employee-only working areas. 37