Car Dealer Lawyer

I was at a National Labor Relations Board conference a few weeks ago, and one of the topics for the conference was Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects employees engaged in protected concerted activities.  Basically, the Act says that it is illegal to punish or fire employees when they act together or on behalf of others regarding the terms and conditions of employment.  Labor lawyers love to dive into minutia like what is “concerted” activity and when does an action concern the terms and conditions of employment.  But what many employers don’t realize is that this prohibition covers you even if your employees never had anything to do with a union.

Here’s an example from my past.  I used to run a Honda store in a small town in Georgia.  One day I found an envelope on my desk with a petition from my salespeople.  They wanted to turn on the television and watch the Georgia Bulldog football games on Saturdays.  I, on the other hand, had the silly notion that SATURDAYS WERE FOR SELLING CARS!!!  For us, it’s game day.  Now I know that this is Georgia, and the Bulldogs are pretty important, but I had to wonder what Coach Mark Richt would have said if his players asked him if they could spend their game days watching us sell cars.  Well, you can that I was not happy about the request.

My gut reaction when presented a situation like that is to ask myself, “How would Stalin have handled this?”  Luckily, I don’t make personnel decisions quickly, so I was able to cool off before I did anything stupid. 

But what if I would have followed my first instinct and either fired the ringleaders or fired them all?  Well, they could have filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB and probably would have won.   My actions would have been a classic violation of Section 7 because I would have disciplined employees for engaging in a protected concerted activity.  The fact that a union was not involved was not important at all.  Few employees really know about it, but you never know when you might be set up.  So if you ever think about disciplining employees for coming to you to change their working conditions – think twice.  You might be treading on thin ice.