EMP LO Y E E ' S R I GH T S Workers' Rights
Employers should be well-versed in employees' rights, whether their workers are unionized or not, advises an expert
BY S T EP HEN B E N NE T T
Four members of the the National Labor Relations Board (left to right): Richard F. Griffin, Jr.; Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce; Brian Hayes; Sharon Black.
Photo provided by NLRB
S
AY YOU OWN OR MANAGE A FUEL OIL COMPANY AND SOME employees talk to each other about their wages and working conditions—or they complain about their pay
and workplace in a leaflet, on Facebook, or via Twitter. What recourse do you have? Not much, according to Robert Nagle, a lawyer who special-
izes in labor law and advises employers how to avoid running afoul of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). "What a lot of employers don't recognize is that the National
Labor Relations Act applies to them whether or not they have a union," said Nagle of the Philadelphia, Pa., office of law firm Saul Ewing LLC. Nagle spoke about the statute, how it is enforced by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and how that affects all employers, at the Atlantic Region Energy Expo in May in Atlantic City, N.J. The act vests employees with, among other things, the right
to organize, to form and support unions, and to engage in "con- certed activity for each others' mutual aid and protection," according to the board's website (nlrb.gov/).
24 OCTOBER 2012 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com
"Any private company of any size is going to be covered by this
law," Nagle said. "The statute applies to basically all employers in the fuel oil space," he added. In 2011 in the private sector, 6.9 percent of workers were
union members, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. While union organizers in the past might have tended to set their sights on larger operations, that is not as true today, Nagle said. "Recently I think the unions aren't so much interested in size
as much as chance of winning and ease of organizing," he said. "Within the last year I've had campaigns with employers who only have six or seven employees." Smaller and family-owned businesses tend not to have a
dedicated human resources person who is knowledgeable about the NRLA, Nagle noted, nor do they usually have in-house legal counsel, "so they tend to be more vulnerable." Employers could incur legal liability and potentially monetary
liability if they "inadvertently step on their employees' rights" under the statute, Nagle said.
