Partner Donald Schroeder was quoted in the Law360 article, “Workplace Rules and Trump’s NLRB: What Passes Muster?” about the challenges businesses continue to face in navigating the National Labor Relations Board’s standards under the newer Boeing standard. Under Boeing, the board has given businesses greater latitude in justifying rules that restrict workers’ rights to engage in group activity, but it has been slow to flesh out the new standards.
Schroeder said he’s not as concerned about his clients facing challenges now as he was during the Obama administration, when then-general counsel Richard Griffin made a point of challenging even non-union employers’ handbook policies under the broader Lutheran Heritage test. Under Trump, the board will be more apt to let employers control their workers how they see fit, he said.
“At the end of the day, people need to be able to play with each other in the sandbox without causing problems,” Schroeder said. “I think the [Obama] NLRB was really infringing upon what an employer could and could not do in the sandbox, and now I think it’s back to, we’re going to assume your rules are, generally speaking, lawful unless you go above and beyond.”
