Employee and Labor Relations
This domain covers the day-to-day relationship between employer and employees and the legal framework for union representation. Items test discipline and due process, grievance handling, engagement and retention, and NLRA rules on organizing and bargaining.
Core rules
- Progressive discipline: typically verbal warning, written warning, suspension, termination, escalating for repeated or serious misconduct. Just cause requires a known rule, consistent enforcement, a real investigation, credible proof, and a penalty proportional to the offense.
- Hot stove rule: discipline should be immediate, preceded by warning, consistent, and impersonal.
- Due process: before a decision is final, the employee hears the charge, sees the evidence, and has a chance to respond.
- Weingarten rights: a represented employee may request union representation during an investigatory interview that the employee reasonably believes could lead to discipline. The employee must request it; the employer need not volunteer it.
- NLRA Section 7 protects concerted activity for mutual aid or protection, including for non-union employees. Section 8(a) lists employer unfair labor practices: interference, discrimination based on union activity, refusal to bargain, and secondary boycotts.
- Organizing: roughly 30% showing of interest to petition for election, a secret-ballot election, then certification. Mandatory bargaining subjects are wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment.
- Impasse: mediation, then fact-finding, then economic action such as a strike or lockout, except where the Railway Labor Act or public-sector law applies.
Worked example
A supervisor learns that an employee discussed safety concerns with coworkers and issues a written warning for disloyalty. This is likely a Section 8(a)(1) violation: discussing working conditions with coworkers is protected concerted activity, and the discipline interferes with Section 7 rights. The correct response is to address the safety complaint on its merits and withdraw the warning.
Traps that cost marks
- Assuming at-will employment permits discipline for protected activity.
- Believing Weingarten applies to every meeting or to non-union workplaces.
- Promising benefits or threatening reprisals in response to organizing.
- Treating all bargaining subjects as mandatory; permissive and illegal subjects also exist.
- Disciplining employees for discussing wages, which is protected concerted activity.