When employees organize a workplace demonstration around a political or social cause, employers often face the same threshold question: does it matter that the protest touches, even loosely, on some workplace issue? A newly released National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) Advice Memorandum says “no”, at least on these particular facts. The Division of Advice concluded Microsoft lawfully fired two employees for organizing an unauthorized, non-workplace protest over the company’s ties to Israel because the protest was not aimed at improving employees’ own working conditions. But the reasoning is narrower than employers may assume, and it arrives while the Board’s own precedent on mixed-motive protests is under active challenge.
Background
Microsoft terminated two employees who organized an unauthorized on-campus demonstration at the company’s Redmond, Washington headquarters after they disregarded repeated instructions from company security to move the event off corporate property.
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