Employer’s No-Gossip Policy Nixed By NLRB

A for-profit technical school established a no-gossip policy that, among other things, gave it the right to fire employees who “participate in or instigate gossip about the company, an employee, or customer.” Gossip was broadly defined to include talking about “a person’s personal life when they are not present.” Nine months later the school fired an admissions department employee who it said had violated the policy. But in a recent decision, an NLRB administrative law judge shot down the policy as a violation of the National Labor Relations Act and invalidated the employee termination. “This decision,” according to Seyfarth Shaw attorneys Howard M. Wexler and Joshua D. Seidman, “highlights that employers must continue to tread lightly given the NLRB’s ever increasing fixation with workplace rules that it contends are unlawfully restricting employees’ Section 7 rights.”