Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, ON THE LABOR FRONT—Of workplace harmony and civility rules under the NLRA, (Jan 31, 2025)

By Michael J. Soltis

Some employers may opt to follow the Memo’s preventive advice. Some may wait to see if the Trump II Board gets an opportunity to reverse Stericycle, Inc., and return to Boeing, Inc.

Four days before President Donald J. Trump’s second inauguration, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo released a memo entitled the “Harmonization of the NLRA and EEO Laws. It includes a general discussion of the NLRA and our EEO laws generally, and employer obligations under each with an emphasis on workplace conduct.

Employers should not expect that the Memo will enhance their ability to create and maintain workplace harmony because its addresses a narrow legal issue and leaves intact the Biden Board’s approach toward “civility” rules, an approach that which frustrate employer efforts to maintain an appropriate workplace environment.

While the General Counsel’s assurances that an employer can require its employees to comply with EEO laws is comforting, the uncertainty about an employer’s ability to require its employees to conduct themselves appropriately—even when EEO laws are not clearly implicated—remains. For a discussion of whether an employer’s civility policies will pass NLRA muster, see Mike Soltis’ latest On the Labor Front article: Of Workplace Harmony and Civility Rules Under the NLRA.

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