Opinion ID: 733366
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Post-Sony Videotaping of Employees, Section 8(c), and Polling

Text: 27 An employer seeking to use filmed images of employees in its campaign against unionization now faces a wide array of potentially conflicting standards. On the one hand it is undisputed that § 8(c) protects an employer's pure right to express an anti-union message to its employees, subject to certain limitations described in Gissel as necessary in order to prevent encroachment on employees' § 7 rights. Thus, an employer might conclude that under § 8(c) it has the right to make an anti-union videotape including footage of contented employees, as a necessary component of the message it wishes to express. But should the employer prepare such a videotape, an obligation may well attach under the Sony decision that the employer obtain the consent of the employees included in the tape before displaying it to other employees. Therein lies the rub: the Board's polling cases suggest that by soliciting its employees' consent to be included in the anti-union videotape, the employer may be in effect polling them as to their union sentiments, in violation of § 8(a)(1). 10 28 We note that whether this consent solicitation would constitute an unlawful interference with § 7 rights does not turn on the malevolence or innocence of the employer's intent in seeking the employees' consent; rather, the relevant question is whether the solicitations would tend to create among the employees a reasonable impression that the employer was trying to discern their union sentiments. See Teamsters Local Union No. 171 v. N.L.R.B., 863 F.2d 946, 954 (D.C.Cir.1988) (noting that the proper question in determining whether an employer has violated § 8(a)(1) by interfering with employees' exercise of their § 7 rights is whether the employer engaged in conduct which may reasonably be said to tend to interfere with the free exercise of employee rights under the Act (quoting Southwest Regional Joint Bd. v. N.L.R.B., 441 F.2d 1027, 1031 (D.C.Cir.1970) (quoting Joy Silk Mills v. N.L.R.B., 185 F.2d 732, 740 (D.C.Cir.1950)))); see also Struksnes, 165 N.L.R.B. at 1062 ([A]ny 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.); Derek C. Bok, The Regulation of Campaign Tactics in Representation Elections Under the National Labor Relations Act, 78 HARV. L.REV. 38, 106 (1964) (By indicating through his questions that he desires to learn about the sympathies and activities of individual employees, the employer may convey an impression, rightly or wrongly, that he is considering reprisals against union supporters.). 29 The possibility that an employer's intent in making these consent requests is entirely innocent of any desire to determine individuals' attitudes toward the union does, however, demonstrate the inadequacy of the Board's earlier assurances that polling cannot involve protected expression. See Struksnes, 165 N.L.R.B. at 1062 n. 8; Cannon Electric, 151 N.L.R.B. at 1469; Standard-Coosa-Thatcher, 85 N.L.R.B. at 1363. When it issued its earlier pre-Sony decisions declaring that § 8(c) may not successfully be invoked in defense of a polling allegation, the Board may not have foreseen that employer expression involving anti-union filmed presentations would trigger the obligation to seek employee consents, which in turn would raise the specter of employer polling. 30 That failure of prescience notwithstanding, we are confused and troubled by the sharply inconsistent approaches that the Board's ALJs have taken to the convergence of issues presented by post-Sony videotaping of employees. That inconsistency compels this court to again call upon the Board, as we did in International Union of Operating Engineers, to come to grips with [a] 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. International Union of Operating Eng'rs, 353 F.2d at 856. In the case at bar, the ALJ held that the employer's solicitation of its employees' consent to appear in the videotape constituted unlawful polling. In so holding, the ALJ made no mention of the § 8(c) rights of the employer. Allegheny Ludlum Corp., 320 N.L.R.B. at 489-90. In another recent case involving employer videotaping of employees, Flamingo Hilton-Reno, 321 N.L.R.B. No. 53, 1996 WL 293527 (1996), however, a different ALJ held that videotaping employees and afterwards requesting their consent to be featured in an anti-union presentation did not violate the Act. 11 The ALJ in Flamingo Hilton-Reno noted that there [was] no contention that the [employer] did not have a right to produce the video, and assumed, without explanation, that the employer's § 8(c) right included the right to produce campaign videos that portray employees performing their work or otherwise appearing to enjoy the camaraderie of their coworkers. Id. 31 at  15-16. The ALJ did not expressly address the polling concerns raised by the consent solicitations, nor did he attempt to balance the § 8(c) freedom of expression right of the employer against the § 7 associational rights of employees, in evaluating the consent protocol. 32 The Board has a duty to provide conscientious employees, employers, unions, and adjudicators striving to stay within the strictures of the Act with some clear guidelines as to how to proceed in regard to company videotaping of employees. As long as administrative law judges may resolve the potentially conflicting mandates of § 8(a)(1) and § 8(c) implicated in such situations either by deferring to the employer's free speech right and ignoring the employees' right to be free of unlawful polling, or by citing polling concerns and ignoring the employer's free speech right, employers will have no clear notice of what the Act prohibits in this context. Clearly some methods of soliciting employees to appear in anti-union video presentations would not raise significant polling concerns; for example, the company might seek to include only those employees who have on their own initiative clearly expressed opposition to union representation. But once we leave that safe harbor the water gets rough; if a post-filming request for permission always amounts to polling, does the Struksnes standard for polling still apply? An affirmative answer would surely condemn most such videotaping. And even within the safe harbor, how far employers may go in making inquiries to locate those who are overtly against the union will depend on how likely it is that such inquiries would tend to give other employees the reasonable impression that the employer is attempting to discern their sentiments. Such determinations are well suited to the Board's expertise and experience, and we call upon them now to exercise it in this recurrent situation of employer videotaping of employees. Accordingly we set aside this portion of the Board's order and remand this case for further consideration and the articulation of a clearer Board policy as to how the employers may lawfully proceed. 33