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Comment by lelandfe | Hacker News Reader

> an action has to be concerted (certainly the case here)

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.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/157

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This is the cornerstone of union protections under the NLRA. The act defines a union as two or more workers who undertake action together in order to improve their working conditions. In theory, this protects them from retaliation.

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.

There must be some sort of limits to what's protected though, right? SpaceX said they were fired for sending company-wide emails badgering people to sign stuff, and I'd have to imagine there's some line when it comes to using company time/resources to organize. If you grab a megaphone and start disrupting a whole factory floor by using it to try to get people to organize for better rights while you're supposed to be working, that seems like it ought to be a fireable offense, where organizing at someone's house outside of working hours clearly should not.

What cost does an email have company wide?

Most people receive a bunch of emails every day and it's never considered as cost.

> If you grab a megaphone and start disrupting a whole factory floor by using it to try to get people to organize for better rights while you're supposed to be working, that seems like it ought to be a fireable offense, where organizing at someone's house outside of working hours clearly should not.

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.

If I was working at the place where my colleagues were trying to actively undermine CEO by character assassination, that would be disruptive for me. Those folks as my experience at workplace shows could be quite bullies. Working by their side would absolutely be disruptive.

That's not how anything works. Your sensibilities being offended is not the same as materially disrupting the operations of the business.

when I work on something important and someone approaches me with her left-wing political activism, operations will most certainly be disrupted. I work in tech, and I know firsthand what sort of bullying is being preceded by such people approaching you. It is absolutely material

> That's not how anything works. Your sensibilities being offended is not the same as materially disrupting the operations of the business.

The NLRB disagrees with you. Look up the James Damore case.

I agree, though the problem for me is that it was public not private. By blasting it publicly they violated their NDAs too (I presume)

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