Opinion ID: 799606
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The One Button Policy

Text: Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act guarantees to all employees the right to self-organization . . . and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection. . . . 29 U.S.C. § 157. Employers may not interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of [those] rights. 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(1). In particular, the right of employees to wear union insignia at work has long been recognized as a reasonable and legitimate form of union activity, and the respondent's curtailment of that right is clearly violative of the Act. Republic Aviation Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board, 324 U.S. 793, 802 n. 7, 65 S.Ct. 982, 89 L.Ed. 1372 (1945); accord District Lodge 91, International Ass'n of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, AFL-CIO v. National Labor Relations Board, 814 F.2d 876, 879 (2d Cir.1987). To overcome this presumption, an employer bears the burden of showing special circumstances that justify curtailment of the right. Guard Publishing Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 571 F.3d 53, 61 (D.C.Cir. 2009); Midstate Telephone Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board, 706 F.2d 401, 403 (2d Cir.1983). These include ensuring employee safety, protecting the employer's product, [and] maintaining a certain employee image (especially with respect to uniformed employees). Guard Publishing, 571 F.3d at 61. The ALJ found, and the Board agreed, that allowing pro-union employees to wear multiple buttons did not seriously harm Starbucks's legitimate interest in employee image because the Company not only countenanced but encouraged employees to wear multiple buttons as part of that image. These other buttons, the Board found, were not immediately recognizable by customers as company-sponsored, and the pro-union pins at issue were no more conspicuous than the panoply of other buttons employees displayed. Starbucks contends that the Board's rule permits employees to wear an unlimited number of buttons and would convert them into personal message boards and seriously erode the information conveyed by Starbucks-issued pins. We conclude that the Board has gone too far in invalidating Starbucks's one button limitation. As the Board has previously recognized, Special circumstances justify restrictions on union insignia or apparel when their display may . . . unreasonably interfere with a public image that the employer has established. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., 348 N.L.R.B. 372, 373 (2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). Starbucks is clearly entitled to oblige its employees to wear buttons promoting its products, and the information contained on those buttons is just as much a part of Starbucks's public image as any other aspect of its dress code. But the company is also entitled to avoid the distraction from its messages that a number of union buttons would risk. The record reveals that one employee attempted to display eight union pins on her pants, shirts, hat, and apron. Wearing such a large number of union buttons would risk serious dilution of the information contained on Starbucks's buttons, and the company has a legitimate, recognized managerial interest[] in preventing its employees from doing so. District Lodge 91, 814 F.2d at 880. The company adequately maintains the opportunity to display pro-union sentiment by permitting one, but only one, union button on workplace clothing. Starbucks has met its burden of establishing that the one button restriction is a necessary and appropriate means of protecting its legitimate managerial interest in displaying a particular public image through the messages contained on employee buttons.