Opinion ID: 185420
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Abusive and Threatening Language

Text: 17 Adtranz seeks to maintain a decorous and peaceful workplace. As documented in the employee manual at issue in this case, the company's shared values which it deems fundamental to its continuous pursuit for success include [t]rust and respect for self and others, [t]eamwork and cooperation, and [e]ffective communication. Adtranz Employee Handbook at 3. In accordance with these values, Adtranz prohibits the use of abusive or threatening language to anyone on company premises. Id. at 11. Adtranz also prohibits harassment and other conduct that could conflict with its values. 18 To the NLRB and Union Intervenor, Adtranz's effort to maintain a civil and decent workplace is an unfair labor practice that threatens the statutory rights of Adtranz's employees under the NLRA. Prohibiting the use of abusive or threatening language, the Board maintains, has the unrealized potential to chill the exercise of protected activity, as the rule could reasonably be interpreted as barring lawful union organizing propaganda. Adtranz ABB, 331 NLRB No. 40, slip op. at 4. The NLRB does not argue that such chilling necessarily has occurred at Adtranz's Pittsburg facility, nor does it maintain that Adtranz either adopted or applied the policy in order to frustrate or discourage union activity. Rather, the NLRB asserts that the rule against the use of abusive and threatening language in the workplace on its face constitutes an unfair labor practice. 19 Under the Board's reasoning, every employer in the United States that has a rule or handbook barring abusive and threatening language from one employee to another is now in violation of the NLRA, irrespective of whether there has ever been any union organizing activity at the company. This position is not reasonably defensible. It is not even close. In the simplest terms, it is preposterous that employees are incapable of organizing a union or exercising their other statutory rights under the NLRA without resort to abusive or threatening language. 20 The NLRB notes that union campaigns are heated affairs, often spawning intemperate language. According to the NLRB, the abusive or hostile nature of such outbursts does not strip such language of its protected status, and therefore it is unlawful for a company to threaten punishment for the use of such language. According to the Board and the Union Intervenor, it is perfectly acceptable to use the most offensive and derogatory racial or sexual epithets, so long as those using such language are engaged in union organizing or efforts to vindicate protected labor activity. Expecting decorous behavior from employees is apparently asking too much. Indeed, Union Intervenor suggests that it is unfair to expect union members to comport themselves with general notions of civility and decorum when discussing union matters or exercising other statutory rights. We do not share the Union's low opinion of the working people it purports to represent. America's working men and women are as capable of discussing labor matters in intelligent and generally acceptable language as those lawyers and government employees who now condescend to them. 21 The NLRB claims that it is well settled that an employer violates Section 8(a)(1) ... by maintaining a rule that seeks to broadly prohibit employee speech beyond deliberate or malicious false statements. Brief for the NLRB at 9. This is a stunning misreading of the applicable precedent, including the Board's own prior rulings. Indeed, the NLRB has long held the opposite, noting that an employee who is engaged in concerted protected activity can, by opprobrious conduct, lose the protection of the Act. Atlantic Steel Co., 245 NLRB 814, 816 (1979). Under Atlantic Steel, if an employee is sanctioned for the use of obscenity or abusive language, the Board may not ignore the nature of the language used. Rather the NLRB is required to consider the nature of the employee's outburst, among other factors, in determining whether the employee's activity remains protected. Id. See also Felix Indus. v. NLRB, 2001 WL 640638 (D.C. Cir. June 12, 2001). 22 The NLRB is correct that some of its prior precedent could be read to support the proposition it advances here. This proves nothing. Where, as here, the NLRB adopts an unreasonable position, it can find no solace in the fact that it made the same mistake in prior cases. As we have observed in other contexts, merely applying an unreasonable statutory interpretation for several years [cannot] transform it into a reasonable interpretation. F.J. Vollmer Co. v. Magaw, 102 F.3d 591, 598 (D.C. Cir. 1996). The NLRB may be bound by its erroneous precedents. We are not. That said, the Board's ruling here is substantially broader than the cases on which it attempts to rely. For instance, the rules at issue in Lafayette Park Hotel, 326 NLRB No. 824 (1998), and Flamingo Hilton-Laughlin, 330 NLRB No. 34 (1999), barred false, vicious, profane or malicious statements about the employer. As such, these rules discouraged speech that is arguably related to protected activities, in a way that abusive or threatening language more generally is not. An employer's effort to squelch criticism from employees, and threatening to punish false statements without evidence of malicious intent, is quite different from demanding employees comply with generally accepted notions of civility. The former may well constitute an unfair labor practice in the proper context. The latter, in and of itself, does not. This distinction is fully consistent with Linn v. United Plant Guard Workers of America, Local 114, 383 U.S. 53 (1966), which held that libel actions under state law are only preempted by the NLRA to the extent that such actions do not require knowledge of the statement's falsity or a reckless disregard for the truth. 23 The other cases relied upon by the NLRB are no more helpful. In Great Lakes Steel, the company's unfair labor practice was a rule prohibiting the possession or distribution of literature--whether or not during working hours--that was libelous, defamatory, scurrilous, abusive or insulting or which would tend to disrupt order, discipline or production within the plants. 236 NLRB 1033, 1033 (1978). This rule did far more than impose a standard of civility on workplace behavior. Thus, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the rule taken as a whole was too broad, in no small part because it could prohibit solicitation during nonworking hours. Great Lakes Steel v. NLRB, 625 F.2d 131, 132 (6th Cir. 1980). 24 We cannot help but note that the NLRB is remarkably indifferent to the concerns and sensitivity which prompt many employers to adopt the sort of rule at issue here. Under both federal and state law, employers are subject to civil liability should they fail to maintain a workplace free of racial, sexual, and other harassment. Abusive language can constitute verbal harassment triggering liability under state or federal law. See, e.g., Harris v. Forklift Sys., Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 21 (1993). Given this legal environment, any reasonably cautious employer would consider adopting the sort of prophylactic measure contained in the Adtranz employee handbook. While a single, isolated remark will rarely be sufficient to trigger employer liability, see Clark County School Dist. v. Breeden, 121 S. Ct. 1508 (2001), failure to maintain a workplace free of such language can place an employer at significant financial risk nonetheless. See generally Eugene Volokh, What Speech Does 'Hostile Work Environment' Harassment Law Restrict? 85 Geo. L.J., 627 (1997). Under current law, the only reliable protection is a zero-tolerance policy, one which prohibits any statement that, when aggregated with other statements, may lead to a hostile environment. Id. at 638-39. Indeed, such rules are commonplace. See, e.g., id. at 639 n.35 and citations therein. To bar, or severely limit, an employer's ability to insulate itself from such liability is to place it in a catch 22. 25 That the threat of legal liability justifies limitations on threatening language due to the potential for workplace discord or violent confrontations is a principle the NLRB has itself acknowledged. In Southwestern Bell Tel. Co., the NLRB upheld an employer's ban on employees' wearing offensive shirts making derogatory reference to the employer during contract negotiations as a reasonable precaution against discord and bitterness between employees and management, as well as to assure decorum and discipline in the plant. 200 NLRB 667, 670 (1972). 26 We understand that labor negotiations produce occasional intemperate outbursts and, in a specific context, such language may be protected. We also recognize that the uneven or partial application of a rule against abusive and threatening language could constitute an unfair labor practice if directed against employees seeking to exercise their statutory rights. Yet the Board's position that the imposition of a broad prophylactic rule against abusive and threatening language is unlawful on its face is simply preposterous. It defies explanation that a law enacted to facilitate collective bargaining and protect employees' right to organize prohibits employers from seeking to maintain civility in the workplace.