Dive Brief:
- An Indiana hospital did not violate federal labor law when it fired a union steward for insubordination, an administrative law judge of the National Labor Relations Board held Monday.
- The Methodist Hospitals, Inc. terminated the steward, who also served as a health unit partner, after she refused to meet with her supervisor following complaints about her job performance and interactions with co-workers. The judge held that the employee did not engage in protected, concerted or union activity when she did so.
- The decision demonstrates the limits of what is considered to be protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act, a topic that the NLRB has addressed several times in recent years during a series of political shifts.
Dive Insight:
Under the NLRA, employers are prohibited from interfering, restraining or coercing employees from exercising their right to self-organization or to engage in protected activities. Per the judge in the Methodist Hospitals decision, this prohibition also extends to an individual employee’s assertion of a right grounded in a collective bargaining agreement. This is known as the Interboro doctrine, according to the Marquette Law Review.
The Methodist Hospitals steward had claimed that the organization’s CBA contained a provision permitting the employer a period of 10 days to discipline employees following a complaint. The steward then cited that provision, arguing that the time period had passed by the time she was instructed to meet her supervisor. Methodist Hospitals’ labor relations director then informed the union that the steward had been insubordinate.
The director and supervisor met with the steward a short time later. At this meeting, the pair announced that they intended to discharge the steward. The hospital offered the steward the chance to remain employed under a last-chance agreement, but she refused the offer.
NLRB claimed that the steward’s assertion about the time limit constituted protected activity and that, by discharging her for insubordination, Methodist Hospitals was discriminatorily motivated.
But the judge disagreed, writing that the provision in question established that employees could refuse to participate in an investigatory interview only if management failed to inform them of their right to have a union steward or delegate present, or if the same would be unavailable. The judge also noted that the supervisor provided the steward notice that Methodist Hospitals and the union agreed to an extension allowing the organization additional time to investigate the complaints against her.
“An employee’s belief that he/she is asserting a contractually bargained right is not reasonable or honest when it is shown to be knowingly false, unfounded, or inapplicable,” the judge concluded.
The decision clarifies what activity falls within the NLRA’s scope of protected activity, a topic addressed in several NLRB rulings in recent years.
For instance, the judge cited the NLRB’s 2023 Intertape Polymer decision, in which the Board clarified the standard its general counsel must meet to show that an adverse employment decision is motivated by union or other protected activity. There, the Board said its general counsel must analyze whether a reasonable inference exists that protected activity is a motivating factor in an adverse employment action, rather than animus specific to the activity.
Elsewhere, NLRB’s political shifts contributed to a similar decision last month in Lion Elastomers, in which the Board revisited a Biden-era decision on the NLRA’s standard for analyzing whether an adverse action is taken lawfully against an employee who engages in misconduct that occurs during protected activity.
