Election Conduct at Ridgeline Distribution

The employer has a legitimate right to express views on unionization, but not through threats, promises of benefit, or interrogation. Apply that test to each item.

• Video of a competitor's plant that closed after unionization: do not use it. Even if factually accurate, presented in a mandatory meeting it functions as an implied threat of closure and is likely to be found coercive. Accuracy is not a defense when the message is a warning of reprisal.
• Statement that wages and the annual increase will be frozen if the union wins: stop. This is an explicit threat of reprisal tied to protected activity and is the clearest unfair labor practice of the three.
• Supervisors asking associates how they intend to vote: stop. Soliciting voting intentions is interrogation, and supervisors are agents whose conduct binds the employer.
• Mandatory meetings: historically lawful as employer speech, but this is the unsettled item. The current NLRB General Counsel has signaled she will ask the Board to treat mandatory captive-audience meetings as unlawful, so the risk-adjusted advice is to make attendance voluntary, hold meetings on paid time, allow questions, and stick to factual comparisons of compensation and benefits with and without a union. Do not build the campaign around them.

The practical framing for the site director: you may say what you believe, including that you think a union is unnecessary. You may not say what you will do to them if they vote yes.

Stop the conduct immediately and treat it as a live legal risk, not a training gap.

• Instruct in writing, today. The supervisor must cease all questioning about cards, signatures, or voting intentions, and must not discuss any employee's union sympathies with anyone. Written instruction creates the record that the employer acted promptly once it knew.
• Do not discipline or reassign employees based on anything the supervisor reported. Any adverse action touching a known card signer in the next several weeks will be scrutinized as retaliation regardless of the stated reason, and the documented reason must be genuinely independent.
• Preserve the reporting chain. The site director received the reports and did not stop them, so the correction must come from HR and counsel with the site director's explicit acknowledgment. A memo to the supervisor alone does not cure the site director's own exposure.
• Assess election risk with counsel. The conduct may support objections after the election or a unfair labor practice charge, and counsel needs the facts now while remediation is still possible, not after the results are known.
• Do not retaliate against anyone who raised the issue. If an associate complained about being questioned, that person is now in the highest-risk category for any subsequent discipline and should be handled by someone other than the receiving supervisor.

Determine their status under the Act before answering, because it changes the analysis completely.

• If the leads are statutory supervisors (they assign work, direct employees, or effectively recommend hiring and discipline), their conduct is attributable to the employer. Employer-orchestrated petitions, solicitation of grievances with implied promises to fix them, and surveillance of union sentiment by supervisors all create serious exposure. The answer is no.
• If the leads are not statutory supervisors, they hold the same protected rights as the associates they work alongside. They may campaign, advocate, and circulate petitions on their own initiative, just as union supporters may. But the employer cannot direct, draft, fund, or coordinate the effort, and HR should say plainly that involvement by management converts protected employee activity into an employer campaign.

Regardless of status, the leads should be told what they cannot do: they may not question associates about how they will vote, they may not condition anything on union support, and they must not threaten. Clarify that any petition cannot be used to identify or track individuals for later treatment.

Finally, advise on alternative channels: the leads' energy is better pointed at legitimate issues (scheduling, equipment, break room conditions) raised through normal forums, provided the company does not extract a promise to resolve those issues in exchange for opposing the union.