Opinion ID: 185442
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Nature of outburst

Text: 14 We agree with Felix that the Board's treatment of the nature of Yonta's obscene eruption is problematic. All the Board said on this score is that Yonta's conduct consisted of a brief, verbal outburst of profane language, unaccompanied by any threat or physical gestures or contact. From that the Board reasoned that this factor did not weigh[ ] in favor of Yonta losing the protection of the Act. Id. at 2. 15 Recall that Yonta's outburst -though brief and verbal -consisted of calling his supervisor a f--king kid no less than three times, and insisting that Yonta need not listen to him. That no threat or physical violence accompanied this insubordinate vitriol cannot, under established law, prevent it from weigh[ing] in favor of ... losing the protection of the Act. 16 In Atlantic Steel the Board expressly disavowed any rule whereby otherwise protected activity would shield any obscene insubordination short of physical violence. 245 NLRB at 817. Yet the Board's treatment of the third Atlantic Steel factor in this case runs toward precisely such a rule. In addition, this court previously rejected a suggestion from the Board that employees engaging in protected activity could not be dismissed unless they were involved in flagrant, violent, or extreme behavior; as we pointed out, 10(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 160(c), permits discharge for cause short of that. Aroostook County v. NLRB, 81 F.3d 209, 215 n.5 (1996); see also Republic Aviation Corp. v. NLRB, 324 U.S. 793, 803 n.10 (1945) (The Act, of course, does not prevent an employer from making and enforcing reasonable rules covering the conduct of employees on company time). If an employee is fired for denouncing a supervisor in obscene, personally-denigrating, or insubordinate terms -and Yonta here managed all three with economy -then the nature of his outburst properly counts against according him the protection of the Act. 17 The Board here truly does not contend otherwise; rather, it observes that it could, notwithstanding the nature of Yonta's outburst, deem his conduct protected as a result of its overall balancing of the four factors. That is correct but irrelevant; it does nothing to rehabilitate the Board's actual treatment of the third factor in its order, where it blandly asserts that Yonta's statements did not weigh[ ] in favor of Yonta losing the protection of the Act. Under the applicable precedents Yonta's statements do weigh against protection. Whether they weigh enough to tip the balance in that direction is for the Board to decide on remand.