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Comment by java_script | Hacker News Reader

Wrong on all counts except when you said you’re allowed to organize: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...

> This includes your right to distribute union literature, wear union buttons t-shirts, or other insignia (except in unusual "special circumstances"), solicit coworkers to sign union authorization cards, and discuss the union with coworkers. Supervisors and managers cannot spy on you (or make it appear that they are doing so), coercively question you, threaten you or bribe you regarding your union activity or the union activities of your co-workers. You can't be fired, disciplined, demoted, or penalized in any way for engaging in these activities.

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> presume to be able to use company equipment

I think this is the central point. You can do all those things, but are you entitled to use company equipment to do so?

The term spying becomes less clear-cut in that context too. It's spying if I get your personal private communication, but monitoring one's own internal network would not normally be considered spying.

Looks like I’m out of date as of December after Caesars https://www.google.com/amp/s/onezero.medium.com/amp/p/8d5d92...

The other prong of this that is still possibly illegal though is spying on union-specific activity, and leaving that information out for employees to find, which fits under the criteria of making employees believe they’ll be spied on for unionizing - even not on company IT systems.

There’s already an NLRA complaint against amazon (source: Matt Bruenig on Twitter) over the Union-spy job posting. It’ll be interesting to see where that goes and if this gets tacked on.

I think you’re wrong and exposing some weird form of entitlement to resources that don’t belong to you. Of course you can talk to people and organize. None of that grants you the right to use their systems, equipment, or resources to pursue those activities. Company email isn’t “talking” to people, you do that with your mouth. Company email is an IT system the company implements for whatever company business and communication they chose to allow. You are not entitled to use the company’s systems in any way they don’t allow, and they have every right to monitor communications on those systems.

? Not entitled nor even saying it’s a good idea. Unionizers all recommend doing it in secret anyway. I was more interested in talking about the legality

I am a huge supporter of organizing and in general POWER TO THE PEOPLE. I believe that with my heart and soul. But the idea that you should be able to force the company to let you use company resources and systems that they pay for, for this purpose seems truly stupid to me.

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