Even the lone wolf can establish protected concerted activity with today’s NLRB

In Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market (8/11/14) [pdf], the NLRB held that an employee engaged in protected concerted activity merely by asking co-workers for help in making a sexual harassment complaint to her employer. It was irrelevant to the Board whether the employee had engaged other employees for group activity; all that mattered was that the employee engaged others at all.

Margaret Elias, a cashier, wrote a note on a whiteboard about some training known as “TIPS.” When she returned to the whiteboard the next day, she noticed that the “P” in “TIPS” had been changed to a “T,” and someone had drawn a picture of a worm (or peanut) urinating on her name. In support of her intent to file a sexual harassment complaint with her employer, Elias asked three co-workers to sign a piece of paper that contained a copy of the whiteboard. When the employee relations manager later spoke to Elias about her harassment complaint, she asked why Elias felt the need to obtain co-workers signatures, and instructed her not to obtain any further statements so that she could conduct an investigation. Elias admitted that was only filing the complaint on her own behalf, and her co-workers were not involved other than as potential witnesses.

Based on these facts, the NLRB concluded that the employer violated the Act by questioning Elias about the signatures she obtained:

Here, Elias sought her coworkers’ assistance in raising a sexual harassment complaint to management, by soliciting three of them to sign the piece of paper on which she had copied the altered whiteboard message in order to “prove” the harassment to which she had been subjected. Although she did not intend to pursue a joint complaint, her testimony establishes that she wanted her coworkers to be witnesses to the incident, which she would then report to the Respondent…. Elias’ conduct in approaching her coworkers to seek their support of her efforts regarding this workplace concern would constitute concerted activity. Elias did not have to engage in further concerted activity to ensure that her initial call for group action retained its concerted character.

Even if the employee was pursuing her own individual claim, her “selfish motivation” for speaking to her co-workers was irrelevant because “concertedness is not dependent on a shared objective or on the agreement of one’s coworkers with what is proposed.”

This case creates a dangerous precedent. It enables an employee to create an unfair labor practice out of thin air merely by airing an issue with co-workers, regardless of whether those co-workers share in that concern. It makes case for the lone wolf, who, even though, by definition, a lone wolf cannot act in concert.

I’ve long argued that the current iteration of the NLRB is using “protected concerted activity” as a life-vest to prop up its own existence. Fresh & Easy does little to dissuade me of that opinion. If a single employee, admittedly acting on her own behalf, can create an unfair labor practice merely by talking to other employees about a workplace issue, then any workplace conversation could constitute protected concerted activity. If that is the rule, then good luck disciplining employees for anything.

Announcing a new beginning at Meyers Roman

And to make an end is to make a beginning.
― T.S. Eliot

According to my blogging service, this is my 2,000th post. While this milestone is mind-blowing (at least to me), I am marking this bi-millenium with news of a different kind. Today, I start the next phase of my career at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis.

Why switch law firms, you ask? It’s hard to quantify “why.” New opportunities, new challenges, new surroundings, etc. In short, I feel energized, which, when you have to get up and go to work everyday, is a really good thing. I am excited by everything Meyers Roman offers to my career and to me. I’m thrilled to join a vibrant firm with a vibrant labor and employment practice.

I’d be remiss if I did not say thank you to the firm that I’ve called home for the past 8 years, and was the only home this blog has known. Kohrman Jackson & Krantz was nothing but supportive of me and this blog, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

For you, my loyal readers, the move will be transparent. Other than seeing a different firm’s logo above the fold, nothing else is going to change (for now). I’ll still bring you daily posts, Monday through Friday, which will still include my famous Friday What I’m Reading weekly recap. Still, new beginnings bring new opportunities, and I’m looking forward to version 2.0 of the blog, which will bring more multimedia, including (if I can get my stuff together) a podcast.

I’d love to hear from anyone and everyone. My new contact information is:

Jon Hyman
Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis
Eton Tower
28601 Chagrin Blvd., Ste. 500
Cleveland, Ohio 44122
216-831-0042
jhyman@meyersroman.com
www.meyersroman.com

WIRTW #332 (the “carpe diem” edition)

There are lots of snippets of Robin Williams I could play. I chose this one.

I'll see everyone Monday with some huge news.  

Here’s the rest of what I read this week:

Discrimination

• The “Dirty Dozen”: Top 12 employer harassment mistakes — via Robin Shea’s Employment and Labor Insider
• An employer-defendant argued that cancer — CANCER!!! — is not an ADA disability — via Eric Meyer’s The Employer Handbook Blog
• “Oh Wow, You Look So Pretty I Can’t Even Concentrate” – Sexual Banter Or Sexual Harassment? — via Employment Discrimination Report
• My Muslim Co-Worker Gets Special Breaks — via Evil Skippy at Work
• Can You Get Compensatory and Punitive Damages in ADA Retaliation Claims — via Understanding the Americans with Disabilities Act
• My boss makes us all keep kosher for Passover — via Ask a Manager
• A Lesson on the ADA: Engaging in Good Faith in the Interactive Process is Essential — via Employment Matters Blog

Social Media & Workplace Technology

• Creators of Siri working on Viv, a complex AI that can teach itself — via TiPb
• Will Baby Monitor Technology lead to Employee Monitoring? — via Blogging4Jobs
• The 21st Century Water Cooler: Discovery and Text Messages — via Abovethelaw.com
• Check Your Social Profile for These Lesser-Known Job-Killing Mistakes — via Lifehacker
• Should Employers Ban Email After Work Hours? — via Harvard Business Review
• Courts Warming up to Social Media — via Justice Judy

HR & Employee Relations

• Ban the Box Has Jumped the Shark- It’s Getting Ugly Employers — via employeescreenIQ Blog
• Yes, Dad’s DO Have It a Lot Easier in the Workforce — via TLNT
• Is Being a Good Parent and a Good CEO Impossible — via Fast Company
• 16 Dads 16 Experiences: This Is What Paternity Leave Looks Like in 2014 — via Fathers, Work and Family
• American Horror Story: Violence in the Workplace — via DOL’s Work in Progress
• Robin Williams and the Dark Side of Genius — via Evil HR Lady
• Don’t Panic: Workplace Worries Over Ebola Virus — via Corporate Counsel
• Anatomy of a Big-Time Noncompete Dispute — via Suits by Suits

Wage & Hour

• Wage-And-Hour Implications For Telecommuting — via Employment Essentials
• Seyfarth Shaw Attorneys Update Definitive Guide to Litigating Wage & Hour Lawsuits — via The Wage and Hour Litigation Blog
• Did you know that having a migraine headache qualifies an employee for FMLA coverage? — via Mike Haberman’s Omega HR Solutions

Labor Relations

• Food, Folks, and Franchise-Wide Liability: NLRB Signals Intent to Pound Square Joint Employer Peg Into Round Franchise Hole — via Trade Secret / Noncompete Blog
• New Vista, NLRB Square Off In 3d Circuit — via Labor Relations Today
• NLRB Attacks Another Arbitration Agreement — via Matt Austin Labor Law
• The NLRB Goes To “Pot” – “The Board, Like Congress, Has The Authority To Regulate The Marijuana Industry” — via Management Memo
• NLRB Work Rule Decisions Continue to be a Mixed Bag — via Labor Relations Update

When retaliation stands the test of time

Often when we consider the issue of temporal proximity in a retaliation case, we examine it from the standpoint of whether temporal proximity is sufficient to infer retaliatory intent when the adverse action happens right on the heels of the protected activity. What happens, however, if the converse is true—if a long period of time elapses between the protected activity and the adverse action. Can an employer save itself from a retaliation claim simply by waiting it out? This was the question the court faced in Malin v. Hospira, Inc. (7th Cir. 8/7/14).

Deborah Malin worked in the IT department of the Abbott Laboratories’s hospital product division (spun off to a new company, Hospira, in 2006). In July 2003, she informed her direct boss, Bob Balogh, that she was going to complain to HR about sexual harassment by her indirect supervisor, Satish Shah, who reported to Mike Carlin. Before she could complain to HR, Balogh told her that Carlin told him to do everything in his power to stop Malin from going to HR. Malin ignored the stop sign and lodged her harassment complaint with HR.

Between the 2003 complaint and the 2006 Hospira reorganization, Malin applied for several promotions but received none of them. On June 14, 2006, the management team (including Carlin, then the CIO) met to discuss new roles for current IT employees. Five days later, Malin took emergency FMLA leave. Several weeks later, the IT department announced its reorganization, which again resulted in Malin being passed over for a promotion.

Among other claims, Malin claimed that when Hospira executed its 2006 reorganization, it retaliated against her for the 2003 harassment complaint. The court concluded that the intervening three-year gap between the harassment complaint and the decision not to promote Malin was insufficient to defeat her retaliation claim:

[A] long time interval between protected activity and adverse employment action may weaken but does not conclusively bar an inference of retaliation…. Rather, if the time interval standing alone is long enough to weaken an inference of retaliation, the plaintiff is entitled to rely on other circumstantial evidence to support her claim….

The evidence in this case permits an inference that Carlin had a long memory and repeatedly retaliated against Malin between 2003 and 2006. Malin was denied promotions numerous times between 2003 and 2006. During that time, Carlin was the final decision-maker on all promotions in the IT department, both at Abbott and after the spin-off at Hospira. Malin’s immediate supervisors repeatedly told her that she would be an excellent fit for newly-available positions at higher salary grades and that they would recommend that she be promoted into them. Nevertheless, Malin did not receive any promotions at Hospira between 2003 and 2006…. These incidents are circumstantial evidence that Carlin remembered Malin’s complaint about Shah and acted to prevent her from being promoted at Hospira long after the complaint was made.

This case serves as a solid reminder that an employer cannot hold a grudge against an employee who engaged in protected activity, with the hope that the passage of time will permit later retaliation. If an employee can connect the dots between the protected activity and the adverse action, the employer faces risk, no matter how much time has passed.

Image via Robbert van der Steeg (originally posted to Flickr as Eternal clock) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Do not force employees to work during FMLA leave

With technology making work-from-home more and more feasible, it is easier and easier for employees to work while "out" on an FMLA or other leave. If an employee seeks FMLA leave, however, can an employer force an employee to work, even if the work is paid? According to Evans v Books-a-Million (11th Cir. 8/8/14) [pdf], the answer is no.

When Tondalaya Evans, a pregnant payroll manager for Books-a-Million, requested FMLA paperwork for her impending September 1 due date, her employer told her that she “would not go on leave but would work while on maternity leave.” She protested, but was told that she had no choice because the "go-live" date for the new payroll system on which she had been working had been delayed until November. Evans gave birth on August 30, and immediately starting working (full-time, and with full pay) upon arriving home from the hospital with her baby on September 1. When she eventually returned to the office, she was transferred to a new position. Unhappy with the transfer, Evans quit and sued, claiming, among other things, FMLA interference.

The court concluded that requiring an employee to work (even for pay) in lieu of requested FMLA leave for which the employee was entitle to take violates the FMLA. In doing so, it rejected the employer’s argument that it could not have violated the FMLA because it paid Evans for her time off.

It seems plain to us that if an employer coerces an employee to work during her intended FMLA leave period and, subsequently, reassigns her based upon her allegedly poor performance during that period, the employee may well have been harmed by the employer’s FMLA violation.

What lesson can employers learn from this case? Don’t suggest or require that an employee work during an FMLA-eligible leave (even if it’s paid). The purpose of the FMLA is to enable employees to take time off from work for certain qualifying medical and other reasons without from the encumbrance of work responsibilities and the fear of losing one’s job while away from work. Telling an employee that she cannot take an FMLA, but instead can (must?) work from home, undercuts both of these purposes. It both forbids an employee from taking time off, and puts the employee’s job at risk because of slipped performance as a result of divided attention. FMLA leave is federally guaranteed for a reason. Don’t mess with that reason by requiring work (albeit paid and at home) in lieu of bona fide leave of absence.

Apparently, “information security” is now an unfair labor practice

In Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market (7/31/14) [pdf], the NLRB examined the following “Confidentiality and Information Security” policy:

We have an important duty to our customers and our employees to respect the information we hold about them and ensure it is protected and handled responsibly. The trust of our staff and customers is very important, so we take our obligations under relevant data protection and privacy laws very seriously. We should also regard all information concerning our business as an asset, which, like other important assets, has a value and needs to be suitably protected.

What does it mean for me? …

• Keep customer and employee information secure. Information must be used fairly, lawfully and only for the purpose for which it was obtained.

The Board concluded that this directive reasonably tends to chill employees in their Section 7 rights to engage in protected concerted activity:

We find … that employees would reasonably construe the admonition to keep employee information secure to prohibit discussion and disclosure of information about other employees, such as wages and terms and conditions of employment…. In addition, the instruction to use information “only for the purpose for which it was obtained” reinforces the impression that the rule prohibits Section 7 activity, as the Respondent’s business purpose clearly does not include protected discussion of wages or working conditions with fellow employees, union representatives, or Board agents.

Here’s the problem with the Board’s  current application of the Section 7 “protected concerted” rules to employer policies. It presumes bad intent by the employer. The Board imagines a parade of horribles, and strikes down any policy on account of some hypothetical bad conduct by the employer.

Member Johnson picks up on these themes in his dissenting critique:

Of course, the relevant inquiry is whether employees would reasonably construe rules as restricting Section 7 activity, and not whether employers intended the rule to restrict Section 7 activity. But certainly, this fact does not support construing rules to presume a malicious intent on the part of the employer. An employer’s primary purpose in drafting employee handbooks and policies is not to stifle employee rights, but to attempt to comprehensively cover many topics, including compliance with other workplace statutes and policies that protect business interests and the workplace environment of its employees….

As an alternative approach, Member Johnson proposes giving the challenged rule a reasonable reading, instead of deconstructing it with an eye towards illegality.

I believe the best approach is to examine the overall context of a disputed rule—from the general purpose of the document in which the rule is contained, its introduction, its general sections and topics and accompanying explanatory texts, and finally, to the disputed rule and the text around it—to give a rule a reasonable reading.

While Member Johnson is 100% correct, his view is the minority view (at least for the next 30 months). Thus, employers would be prudent to carefully review all workplace policies in light of these gruesome standards, and seek the guidance of experienced labor counsel to draft or, at a minimum, review all handbooks and other workplace policies.

You might want to reconsider if you send your FMLA forms via regular mail

One of the very first things a lawyer learns in law school is the “mailbox rule.” This rule simply states that if a letter “properly directed is proved to have been either put into the post-office or delivered to the postman, it is presumed … that it reached its destination at the regular time, and was received by the person to whom it was addressed.” It gives the benefit of the doubt to the sender, based on the reliability of the U.S. Postal Service.

Well, it’s 2014, and at least one federal court of appeals is no longer enamored with the reliability of the U.S. Postal Service. In Lupyan v. Corinthian Colleges, Inc. (3d Cir. 8/5/15) [pdf], the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware), rejected the mailbox rule and ruled that its presumption does not apply when an employer sends FMLA forms via regular snail mail, and the employee, without any other support, denies that he or she received the forms in the mail.

Here are the facts. Lisa Lupyan, an instructor at Corinthian Colleges, took a personal leave of absence for depression. While out, she sent the school a completed FMLA medial certification supporting her leave. As a result, the employer converted the leave from “personal” leave to “FMLA” leave, and mailed, via regular U.S. mail, the appropriate FMLA forms designating her absences as such. When Lupyan attempted to return to work after 14 weeks, the employer told her that it had already terminated her because she had failed to return after her 12 weeks of FMLA had expired. 

The court concluded that because the employer could not prove that Lupyan had received the forms, she was entitled to a jury trial on her FMLA claims.

CCI provided no corroborating evidence that Lupyan received the Letter. The Letter was not sent by registered or certified mail, nor did CCI request a return receipt or use any of the now common ways of assigning a tracking number to the Letter. Therefore, there is no direct evidence of either receipt or non-receipt….  Accordinly, we hold that evidence sufficient to nullify the presumption of receipt under the mailbox rule may consist solely of the addressee’s positive denial of receipt, creating an issue of fact for the jury

More importantly, the court opined on the type of notice an employer should expect to provide in today’s modern age.

In this age of computerized communications and handheld devices, it is certainly not expecting too much to  require businesses that wish to avoid a material dispute about the receipt of a letter to use some form of mailing that includes verifiable receipt when mailing something as  important as a legally mandated notice. The negligible cost and inconvenience of doing so is dwarfed by the practical consequences and potential unfairness of simply relying on business practices in the sender’s mailroom.

What does this mean to your business? Stop sending FMLA notices by regular U.S. mail. Instead, use a method that enables you to prove delivery.

1. If you hand-deliver the notices to an employee, have the employee sign and date a receipt for the documents.
2. If you mail, send via a method that permit you to track delivery — whether it’s certified mail with a green card to return, or an express delivery service with a tracking number.
3. If you email, click the box on Outlook that will send a delivery notice upon receipt.

I was also planning to write a long dissertation on what this employer did wrong, how it failed to effectively communicate with the employee during and after her leave, and how a few simple phone calls could have avoided this entire mess. Then I read Jeff Nowak’s thoughts on his FMLA Insights blog, and decided I couldn’t say it any better:

I see such a lost opportunity here. Couldn’t this mess have been avoided had the College simply kept in regular contact with the employee while she was on leave? … If Lisa had any doubt whether or not she was on FMLA leave, that ambiguity would have been resolved in one quick phone call from the College a few weeks into her leave. Am I correct? Maintaining regular contact with your employees serves many good purposes: a) it helps you best administer the employee’s FMLA leave and the timing of their return; b) it is the ADA interactive process. Think about it — no sweat if this condition later is considered an ADA disability, since you have been communicating regularly with your employee. As such, you cannot be accused of any break down in the interactive process!; and c) it’s just good business practice to show that you care about your employee and that you want to do what you can to help them get back to work.  Don’t forget we’re in the human relations business!

This decision also is a reminder of what not to do when FMLA leave ends. What else did the College do wrong?  First, it insisted that the employee return without restrictions…. Second, the College did nothing to engage the employee as FMLA leave was expiring as to whether any accommodations were necessary to help the employee return to work.  Come on, employer friends!  This is ADA 101.  Talk to your employee well before expiration of FMLA leave to begin determining whether they might need some assistance to return to work.