Board: Companies can bar union e-mail

Employers can prohibit workers from using the office e-mail system for union activities, so long as they prohibit solicitations from any outside organization, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled.

The board said its 3-2 decision sets a new labor relations standard that allows employers to prohibit union activity through the company's e-mail system while at the same time permitting office chitchat and personal messages.

The decision, released Friday, upheld the management of the Eugene Register-Guard newspaper in a case involving e-mail messages sent by Suzi Prozanski, a copy editor and Newspaper Guild leader, during contract negotiations in 2000 and the warnings the company gave her.

The board said two of the messages were "solicitations to support the union," and the company was justified in enforcing a policy that forbade the use of e-mail for "non-job-related solicitations." It ruled against the paper on a third message, saying it was "simply a clarification of facts surrounding a recent union event."

The three-member majority said it was reversing an administrative law judge's decision that the newspaper couldn't ban union messages at the same time it allowed "jokes, baby announcements, party invitations, and the occasional offer of sports tickets or request for services such as dog walking."

They added that a federal appeals court had distinguished between personal and union use of an office bulletin board and it was following the court's rationale.

The two dissenters said given the way e-mail "has transformed modern communication, it is simply absurd to find an e-mail system analogous to a telephone, a television set, a bulletin board, or a slip of scrap paper."

They said an e-mail is not like phone lines or bulletin boards that have limited capacity.

Newspaper and union leaders at the Register-Guard did not respond immediately on Saturday to requests for comment.

The AFL-CIO's general counsel, Jon Hiatt, called the decision another in a series on the part of Republican board majority aimed at hobbling unions.

"There have to be accommodations to workers' rights even though the company owns the property," he said.