Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, NLRB NEWS—Social media post including internal, password-protected link, not protected, agency says in advice memo, (Apr 3, 2026)

By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.

The advice memo also states that the policy under which the charging party was discharged was not overbroad under Continental Group.

In a recently released advice memo, the NLRB Division of Advice within the Office of the General Counsel considered whether a former Netflix employee’s social media post (made on the “Blind” website) raising workplace concerns lost the National Labor Relation Act’s protection because it included an internal, password-protected link to a meeting at which confidential business information was discussed. It concluded that the inclusion of the link rendered the post unprotected. Moreover, the employer’s Confidential Information and Communications Guidelines were lawful, and the employee’s discharge was not unlawful under Continental Group, Inc., 357 NLRB 409 (2011).

Social media post and termination. After an all-hands meeting convened by the employer in 2022, which included the presentation of confidential business information and answered questions about demotions, attrition, and pay, the employee, who had asked those questions, posted a comment in a thread on Blind, which is a social media website that allows users to discuss companies anonymously after verifying that an employee works for the stated industry. The private message board was accessible by current and former employees. He identified himself, explained the reasons for his questions, and invited others to review the employer’s answers by posting a password-protected link to the meeting and identifying the point in the recording where his questions were discussed. Only current employees would have been able to access the recording link due to password protection.

However, IT became aware of the post and disabled the link. The employee was asked to take it down and he did. He also apologized. He was fired the next day for posting confidential information. He filed a charge with the NLRB and the region submitted his case for consideration.

No Sec. 7 violation. In the memo closing the case, the advice division determined that his termination was lawful under Section 7. “Where an employee is disciplined for alleged misconduct that is part of the res gestae of Section 7-protected activity and a confidentiality rule is in place,” the memo explains, “the Board balances the employee’s interest in disclosing the information and the employer’s legitimate interest in confidentiality in order to determine the lawfulness of discipline pursuant to that policy.”

“Even putting aside the disputed potential for the link to be an ‘attack vector,’—a potential opportunity for hackers to enter the Employer’s systems—we find that the Employer’s interest in prohibiting the link from being shared on third-party websites is sufficient to outweigh the Charging Party’s interest in including the link.”

First, the employee had sufficient means to engage coworkers regarding terms and conditions without including the link. Second, it continued, it would be hard to prove that the employee did not knowingly or intentionally violate the employer’s confidentiality rules since, prior to being fired, he apologized to managers for including the link and added that, in hindsight, sharing it had been unwise.

Overriding interests of employer. Furthermore, the division found that Netflix’s substantial and legitimate confidentiality interests were “overriding since the all-hands meeting undisputedly covered sensitive business information.” It was not swayed from this conclusion based on allegations that the employer sometimes shared similar links with third parties, since most of the examples given related to employee benefits, which was not as highly sensitive.

No Section 8(a)(1) violation. The discharge was also lawful under Continental Group, the advice division explained, because the employer’s policy was not overbroad. Applying Stericycle, Inc., the division concluded that the confidentiality provisions were lawful, even if some of the language was broad (such as language in the “Protecting Confidential Information” section stating that “[a]nything you learn... and any other information you obtain while working at Netflix” is confidential). A reasonable worker, the division concluded, could not interpret that policy, in context, to restrict discussing terms and conditions of employment because employees would “reasonably cabin the meaning of confidential information to legitimately confidential business information given the examples provided in that section... as well as the examples given in the External Communications section....”

It likewise concluded that the prohibition on “engag[ing] in public discussions, including blogs and other social media, concerning any confidential information obtained while working at Netflix” would not reasonably tend to coerce employees in the exercise of their Section 7 rights and the media-contact provisions “would not reasonably tend to chill employees from discussing labor disputes or raising concerted concerns about working conditions with the media.”

The memo specified that it supersedes prior Advice guidance in this case.

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