This sounds like firing people for concerted action, which is one of two illegal reasons for termination in the US (the other being discrimination). I suspect the NLRB will reward them with an offer to get their jobs back or back wages.
From the article, quoting a law professor. I'd never heard the term "concerted action," so I looked up the relevant text of the National Labor Relations Act. It says that employees have the right to engage in concerted actions "for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection..."[0]
I am not familiar with this law; could someone explain why employees complaining in a circulated letter falls into this category? I'm (pleasantly!) surprised this was a legally protected action.
In practice, labor law violations occur all the time and there is very little recourse. The NLRB awards can take a long time to act and has no power to levy punitive damages, so there's a very small penalty for criminal behavior on the company's part, compared to the cost savings of union busting.
Most people receive a bunch of emails every day and it's never considered as cost.
Can you organize on company time? It depends - can you discuss literally anything other than work while at work? Then yes. If not, then you'd have to organize off the clock but not necessarily off-site. There are exceptions for reasonability sake (a nurse can't interrupt an organ transplant to organize, for instance) but sending company-wide emails strikes me as sufficiently non-disruptive as to be protected.
The NLRB disagrees with you. Look up the James Damore case.
> the NLRA is restricted to nonsupervisory employees, said Kate Bischoff,
And whether the statements themselves qualify.
According to WSJ , https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacex-fires-employees-involved....