NLRB General Counsel Issues Guidance On Workplace Policies

On March 18, 2015, the Office of the General Counsel (the "General Counsel") of the National Labor Relations Board ("NLRB" or the "Board") issued Memorandum GC 15-04 (the "Memorandum") providing guidance regarding the legality of employer work rules. The Memorandum does not, in and of itself, represent a change in the law. Instead, the General Counsel published the Memorandum "to offer guidance on [his] views of this evolving area of labor law, with the hope that it will help employers to review their handbooks and other rules, and conform them, if necessary, to ensure they are lawful."

The General Counsel continues to review work rules under the test articulated in the Board's decision in Lutheran Heritage Village-Livonia, 343 NLRB 646 (2004). Under Lutheran Heritage, a work rule need not explicitly restrict Section 7 protected activity to be found unlawful. Instead, a work rule will be deemed to be unlawful if: (i) employees would reasonably construe the rule's