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NLRB: Employer Can Lawfully Prohibit Employees From Customizing Their Email Signature Block


David Saxe Productions, LLC - NLRB 


Facts:  (Note, for the purposes of this brief, I am only looking at the National Labor Relations Board’s (“NLRB”) decision here as to the employer’s policy that prohibited employees from altering their email signature block.)

The employer maintained a policy that allowed for minimal personal use of their work email so long as it did not become excessive.  Included with that policy was a prohibition on employees altering their email signature block to include quotes, personal agendas, solicitations, etc.  A complaint was filed that this policy ran afoul of Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.  The Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) found this policy to be lawful, relying upon the NLRB’s ruling in Purple Communications, Inc.  (Note, that decision has since been overruled.)  In relying upon Purple Communications, the ALJ held the policy was lawful as the employer had not allowed employees to use their work email for personal use.

Analysis:  The NLRB recognized that while the ALJ misapplied Purple Communications, the NLRB’s 2019 decision in Caesar’s Entertainment still led to the same conclusion that the employer’s policy was lawful.  In Caesar’s Entertainment, the NLRB found that employees have no statutory right to use an employer’s email for Section 7 purposes.  Consequently, the NLRB found in this case that the employer could lawfully prohibit employees from altering their email signature block.

The NLRB then turned to the fact that the employer allowed employees to use their work email for limited personal use and reached the conclusion that it did not alter the final outcome finding no violation of the NLRA occurred.  For starters, the policy did not allow employees to alter their signature block for work or personal use.  Second, there was no evidence that the employer discriminatorily enforced its email signature block policy.  As well, the NLRB did not agree with the argument that a policy that prohibited altering signature blocks was akin to a ban on union insignia.  In short, the NLRB found that the employer’s policy in this case only applied to emails sent on the employer’s system and therefore was not analogous to union pins or buttons.

The Takeaway:  File this one away under a highly relevant decision for many employers.  With that being said, with the make up of the NLRB to change in the coming years as President Joe Biden has the opportunity to appoint his own Board Members, it is possible (if not probable) that a different iteration of the NLRB could reach the opposite conclusion with this set of facts.  For the time being, so long as employers have a facially neutral policy in place that does not delineate between Section 7 related messages and non Section 7 related messages, prohibiting employees from modifying their email signature blocks for any purpose is likely to survive scrutiny.

Date:  April 5, 2021

Order:  https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45833dbd0d

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