Opinion ID: 733366
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Employer Polling of Employees and Section 8(a)(1)

Text: 15 Section 7 of the Act gives all nonexempt employees the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.... 29 U.S.C. § 157 (1994). Section 8(a)(1) of the Act makes it an illegal unfair labor practice for an employer to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in [Section 7]. 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(1) (1994). 16 In its 1967 Struksnes decision, the Board observed that an employer's polling of its employees regarding their pro-union or anti-union sentiment was usually both a violation of the employees' § 7 rights in itself, and a likely prelude to further and more severe such violations. See Struksnes Construction Co., 165 N.L.R.B. 1062 (1967). An employer poll may in itself interfere with employees' exercise of their § 7 rights because any attempt by an employer to ascertain employee views and sympathies regarding unionism generally tends to cause fear of reprisal in the mind of the employee if he replies in favor of unionism and, therefore, tends to impinge on his Section 7 rights. Id. at 1062; see also Cannon Electric Co., 151 N.L.R.B. 1465, 1470 (1965) (Coercion by interrogation is one of the 'subtler' forms of management's interference with labor's protected rights. (quoting N.L.R.B. v. Camco, 340 F.2d 803, 804 (5th Cir.1965))); overruled on other grounds by Resistance Technology, 280 N.L.R.B. 1004, 1986 WL 54042 (1986). An employer poll also may lay the groundwork for further violations of § 7 rights because [a]n employer cannot discriminate against union adherents without first determining who they are. Id. (quoting Cannon Electric Co., 151 N.L.R.B. at 1468). The Board observed that in innumerable cases employer polling had been the prelude to employer discrimination against union sympathizers, and thus concluded that employer polling was not only a necessary precursor to discrimination but also an affirmative signal that discrimination would follow. Id; see also Cannon Electric Co., 151 N.L.R.B. at 1468 (The frequency of a pattern of employer conduct associating discrimination against union adherents with employer's efforts to learn the names of union activists supports the conclusion that there is a 'danger inherent' in such conduct: a tendency toward interference with the exercise by employees of their organizational rights. (citations omitted)). 17 Prior to Struksnes the Board had originally held that employer polling was a per se violation of § 8(a)(1), 2 but later modified its position to permit employer polling provided that proper safeguards attended the polling to ensure that it did not interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of their § 7 rights. Blue Flash Express, 109 N.L.R.B. 591, 593 (1954). In Blue Flash Express the Board held that employer interrogation of employees regarding their union sentiments does not violate the Act unless, under all the circumstances, the interrogation reasonably tends to restrain or interfere with the employees in the exercise of rights guaranteed by the Act. Id. at 593. But this somewhat abstract standard soon proved too diffuse to give the Board's subsequent polling cases consistency or to discourage the intimidation of employees by employer polls, and in International Union of Operating Engineers v. N.L.R.B., 353 F.2d 852 (D.C.Cir.1965), this court remanded a polling case to the Board with instructions to come to grips with this constantly recurring problem for the protection of the employees as to their section 7 rights and for that of an employer acting in good faith. Id. at 856 (citations omitted). In Struksnes the Board attempted to carry out this court's mandate by holding that polling does not violate the Act if it satisfies a five-part standard: 18 Absent unusual circumstances, the polling of employees by an employer will be violative of Section 8(a)(1) of the [Act] unless the following safeguards are observed: (1) the purpose of the poll is to determine the truth of a union's claim of majority, (2) this purpose is communicated to the employees, (3) assurances against reprisal are given, (4) the employees are polled by secret ballot, and (5) the employer has not engaged in unfair labor practices or otherwise created a coercive atmosphere. 19 Struksnes, 165 N.L.R.B. at 1063. 20 The more general Blue Flash Express approach to employer inquiries survived outside the polling context, however, although it has not always been possible to see where or why the Board draws the line between polling and other types of interrogation in individual fact scenarios. In general, suspicious employer actions are addressed under the rubric of interrogation when they are directed at individual employees, 3 and when they involve isolated incidents 4 or spontaneous casual interactions between employees and agents of the employer 5 ; polling analysis, on the other hand, is reserved for situations where the employer's actions have a broader, more systematic and more deliberate character. 6 We reiterate, however, that the Board has rarely articulated its rationale for choosing polling analysis over interrogation analysis in particular decisions, and some of its choices between the two defy classification. 7 21 It is of course obvious that an employer can effectively poll its employees through means other than formal surveys or conventional voting-preference polls. What kind of employer actions constitute a poll does not depend on their formal nomenclature; the key is their practical effect of tending to instill in employees a reasonable belief that the employer is trying to find out whether they support or oppose the union. Thus, this circuit has itself applied Struksnes criteria in the context of an employer-organized vote over whether temporary employees belonged in a bargaining unit, on the rationale that this vote was really a vote on union representation since the employer and the union had openly advocated contrary positions on the scope of the bargaining unit. See Midwest Reg'l Joint Bd. v. N.L.R.B., 564 F.2d 434, 444-45 (D.C.Cir.1977). The Board, too, has found that an employer engaged in unlawful polling when its agents organized a betting pool for employees on the outcome of an upcoming representation election, Wellstream Corp., 313 N.L.R.B. 698, 698 n. 2, 704, 1994 WL 66661 (1994), personally passed out hats bearing the message Vote No to employees, Laidlaw Transit, 310 N.L.R.B. 15, 17, 1993 WL 6539 (1993), or personally asked employees to let themselves be photographed holding anti-union signs, Florida Steel Corp., 224 N.L.R.B. 587, 588-89, 1976 WL 7060 (1976). By the same token, the Board has held that merely making Vote No stickers available upon the employees' request does not constitute polling. See Holsum Bakers of Puerto Rico, 320 N.L.R.B. 834, 839, 1996 WL 69107 (1996). In all of these cases, the Board has declared the determinative issue to be whether the employer's actions would tend to give employees the reasonable impression that the employer was attempting to discern their union sentiments. The Laidlaw Transit and Holsum Bakers of Puerto Rico decisions illustrate the contrast most dramatically. Although the formal character of the employer's actions (distributing Vote No paraphernalia to employees) was similar in both cases, only in Laidlaw were the actions held to constitute polling because by personally tendering Vote No hats to individual employees, the employer's agents put these employees in the position of disclosing their preference for or against the Union by the acceptance or rejection of the hats, Laidlaw Transit, 310 N.L.R.B. at 17, whereas by [m]erely making the 'Vote No' stickers available, or honoring employee requests for them, the employer's agents in the latter case did not pressur[e] employees into making an observable choice or open acknowledgment concerning their union sentiments. Holsum Bakers of Puerto Rico, 320 N.L.R.B. at 839 (quoting Schwartz Mfg. Co., 289 N.L.R.B. 874, 879, 1988 WL 214122 (1988)).