News & Commentary September 14, 2023 Big 3 suppliers may receive federal aid.

[Omaha Steve]

https://onlabor.org/september-14-2023/

By Michelle Berger

Michelle Berger is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s News and Commentary: The NLRB’s General Counsel wields Stericycle; legislators in California advance two bills relating to workers; and Big 3 suppliers may receive federal aid.

On Tuesday, the General Counsel of the NLRB issued a complaint against Amazon for violating employees’ rights by maintaining an overly-broad work rule. According to a document tweeted by Amazon Labor Union attorney Seth Goldstein, the complaint issued on Tuesday specifically alleges that Amazon’s confidentiality rule violates the Act.

Per the document, Amazon’s confidentiality rule prohibits employees from “communicat[ing] … proprietary or confidential information of Amazon in whatever form … that is not otherwise generally known to the public.” The rule lists myriad examples, including “business and financial information,” and concludes with a savings clause that attempts to clarify that the rule does not pertain to “terms and conditions of Employee’s own employment.” As Elyse reported, the Board in its Stericycle decision last month reversed the Trump-era standard for unlawful work rules. Stericycle established that workplace rules may be unlawful if employees could reasonably interpret them as interfering with their Section 7 rights. The Board instructed that rules be evaluated from the perspective of an employee who is “economically dependent on the employer.”

FULL story at link above.