right to organize -- through email

[BattleOutWest]

It appears that ability to communicate through company email is being questioned in light of company policy to limit email usage to work related issues.

To some degree, though this is the company policy, it seems to cut through the union's ability to organize in this fashion.

We've attempted to use third party email. We are worried that the employer may find the ability to snoop those conversations as well.

Doesn't this sort of control over union-related activities through email put the union at a disadvantage with management? Or going the other way, if management can solely communicate through email for bargaining, grievances, etc., doesn't that give them an unfair advantage?

[Guest]

I haven't come across this exact situation and I personally haven't heard of any NLRB decisions regarding e-mails so my reply is going to based on what I know of more traditional on-the-job communications. I would assume that they are not going to be too drastically different aside from a few points.

I'm thinking the company is completely in their right to limit the use of non-work related e-mails on their own e-mail client as long as they limit them across the board. Further, they can probably limit you using their internet to access your personal e-mail hosts, again as long as they do it across the board for all personal use. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter much to the NLRB if it has a negative effect on the ability to join and form unions. There are plenty of anti-union tactics in company policy that have the effect of limiting worker's section 7 rights that have been approved by the Board.

Now with traditional face-to-face communication you can talk about the union while working if they let you talk about other things like your kids, spouses or your vacation plans. This is based on the assumption that it is not interfering with your tasks. With e-mail, it would be harder to argue that because it takes your full attention to type out a message so most likely you are doing no work related activities. They could probably also argue that you are spending company resources in doing so.

I'm thinking that a grey area is going to come when it comes to breaks and other non-work hours when on the job. Most likely it will be dependant on if they let you use the internet and company or personal e-mail during non-working hours for non-work related activities. If on your breaks you can check your yahoo e-mail, send jokes to coworkers through intranet, etc., then I would see it hard for them to stop you talking about the union.

Now if they have this rule in place and only decide to enforce it when it comes to union chatter, that may be a different story and could be an unfair labor practice if you can prove it.

But with that all said, as far as using the company's own e-mail client for sending messages, I would advise against that even if they would allow it. It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine them asking an IT to compile all union related messages coming in and out.

[BattleOutWest]

Well, I do know of one work unit that has been told to use work email for work-related business only.

The other thing that is sort of creepy is this term "social network analysis". There again, management can gather insight into whose who within a union based on communications between different union members.

And the management chose to, in an unscrupulous way, they could make work life harder for those at pivotal points in this social network.