Originally appeared in Labor and Employment Newsletter - February 2002
In July 2000, the National Labor Relations Board ("NLRB") overturned a 12-year-old precedent by extending to non-union workers the right to have a co-worker accompany them to an investigatory interview that might result in discipline. Unionized workers had long enjoyed this right to "representation" emanating from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1975 decision in NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U.S. 251 (1975).
In November 2001, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the NLRB’s decision, affirming that the National Labor Relations Act ("NLRA") protection of all employees’ rights to engage in ‘concerted activity for the purpose of mutual aid or protection’ also provides Weingarten rights to non-union workers. Epilepsy Foundation of N. E. Ohio v. NLRB, 268 F.3d 1095 (D.C. 2001).
