On October 3, the National Labor and Relations Board (NRLB) Office of the General Counsel (OGC) issued a Memorandum from the Division of Operations-Management to all Regional Directors, Officers-In-Charge, and Resident Officers.  This Memo (Memorandum OM 17-02) reveals an aggressive new position from the OGC, one which attempts to overturn decades of Board precedent.

For years, the Board has limited workers’ ability to engage in partial or intermittent strikes. In some instances, the Board has used the term “partial strike” to include anything less than a total, traditional strike (where employees completely withdraw their labor and refuse to work until the parties settle the dispute).  This would include intermittent strikes, where employees go back and forth between working and striking.  Other times, the Board has used the term “partial strike” more narrowly to describe more specific types of limited, non-traditional strikes which are situationally distinct from intermittent strikes.  Regardless of the verbiage used, however, the Board has consistently found that Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protects “concerted activity,” does not protect employees engaging in either of these types of limited strikes.  Under current Board precedent, therefore, employees who strike multiple times over the same labor dispute may be disciplined by their employers.

Now, the OGC wishes to dramatically extend Section 7 protection to cover multiple short-term strikes. The Memo states that the Board’s present test for determining whether such strikes are protected “is difficult to apply” and “exposes employees to potential discipline for activities that should be considered protected under Section 7 of the Act.”  Accordingly, the OGC will now be taking the position that the Board should modify the law regarding intermittent and partial strikes.  In furtherance of this effort, the Memo references an attached model brief and instructs its recipients to utilize the analysis contained in the model brief and incorporate those arguments into the General Counsel’s briefs submitted to Administrative Law Judges and the Board.

The arguments contained in the model brief “urge[] the Board to clarify this area of law by drawing clear conceptual distinctions between partial and intermittent strikes and redefining the circumstances under which intermittent strikes become unprotected.” More specifically, the General Counsel proposes a framework where multiple strikes (even if those strikes are over the same labor dispute) would be protected if: (1) the strikes “involve a complete cessation of work, and are not so brief and frequent that they are tantamount to work slowdowns”; (2) the strikes “are not designed to impose permanent conditions of work, but rather are designed to exert economic pressure”; and (3) the “employer is made aware of the employees’ purpose in striking.”  The model brief argues that this framework “more effectively protects” a worker’s right to strike, “dispenses with the unpersuasive rationales” on which the Board has previously relied, and “better addresses Supreme Court precedent.”

Unfortunately, such an expansion Section 7 protections would upend years of generally understood and accepted labor relations practices. And unsurprisingly, employers would suffer the most, as they attempt to navigate new distinctions and the nuances of newly-protected strikes that will undoubtedly disrupt operations more than traditional strikes.  Accordingly, employers will have an important role to play in NLRB proceedings by pushing back against the OGC’s new and threatening position.