Opinion ID: 627393
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Wearing of Union Insignia

Text: 57 In October 1990, two days before the union election, LPNs Judy Read and Lisa Standefer arrived at work wearing union patches on their uniforms. 18 Both employees were union supporters; Read had previously attended the July 5 organization meeting. Director Turpin called the women into her office and told them to remove the patches. They complied. The Home's employee handbook prohibits the wearing of pins or badges that do not relate to better health care delivery. This rule was not, however, enforced. Thus, Standefer had previously worn a yellow ribbon on her uniform to support the armed forces, and Read had worn a button to work on which was inscribed Your Attitude Is Showing without comment from nursing home management. 58 The Board found that Turpin's actions violated Sec. 158(a)(1). We have recognized that under the rights guaranteed by Sec. 157, employees are entitled to wear union buttons or insignia as part of a concerted activity to assist the union. NLRB v. Mayrath Company, 319 F.2d 424, 426 (7th Cir.1963). See also Republic Aviation Corporation v. NLRB, 324 U.S. 793, 801-03, 65 S.Ct. 982, 987-88, 89 L.Ed. 1372 (1945); NLRB v. Orr Iron, Inc., 508 F.2d 1305, 1308-09 (7th Cir.1975) (per curiam). This right, of course, is not unbounded; it must coexist with the equally undisputed right of employers to maintain discipline in their establishments. Republic Aviation Corporation v. NLRB, 324 U.S. at 797-98, 65 S.Ct. at 985. An employer's right to prohibit organizational activity, however, 59 is limited to the restriction of activities which disrupt, or tend to disrupt, production and to break down employee discipline, and does not include restriction of passive inoffensive advertisement of organizational aims and interests, i.e., the wearing of advertising insignia and buttons, which in no way interferes with discipline or efficient production.... 60 Caterpillar Tractor Company v. NLRB, 230 F.2d 357, 359 (7th Cir.1956). See also Mayrath, 319 F.2d at 426-27. 61 The Home concedes that its employees have been permitted to wear pins and insignia on their uniforms despite the rule against such items, but argues that Beth Israel Hospital v. NLRB, 437 U.S. 483, 98 S.Ct. 2463, 57 L.Ed.2d 370 (1978), allows health care facilities, because they require an atmosphere of tranquility, order and discipline, to place greater restrictions on [union] activity than employers in other types of operations. 19 This latitude, the Home proposes, shielded Turpin's actions with respect to Read and Standefer. 62 The Home's reading of Beth Israel is incomplete. That case involved not the wearing of union insignia, but a rule that prohibited employees from soliciting and distributing literature except in certain designated areas of a hospital. The Supreme Court held that the Board's general approach of requiring health-care facilities to permit employee solicitation and distribution during nonworking time in nonworking areas, where the facility has not justified the prohibitions as necessary to avoid disruption of healthcare operations or disturbance of patients, is consistent with the Act. Id. at 507, 98 S.Ct. at 2476. 63 While Beth Israel would support the proposition that a health care facility may prohibit the wearing of patches that reasonably tend to interfere with employee discipline or disturb nursing home residents, it clearly does not endorse selective enforcement of an otherwise valid rule against wearing insignia unrelated to health care delivery. The Home does not argue that the patches worn by Read and Standefer had the potential to disrupt the efficient and ordered delivery of resident services. As a result, the Home cannot adequately explain its sudden decision to enforce a rule against insignia that, by the Home's own admission, had been negligibly enforced in the past. The Board could reasonably conclude that Turpin deliberately selected Read and Standefer for disparate and discriminatory enforcement of the Home's rule against wearing insignia on employee uniforms. 64