Legal Background | School Employees' Labor Rights & Utah HB 267

Federal Law Massachusetts State Law

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or “the Act”) provides protections for private-sector employees and outlines union rights.
Section 7 states that employees have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, and to engage in other concerted activities for mutual aid or protection, regardless of whether the employee is in a union.
Union activity by its definition is concerted – this means that an employee does not necessarily have to be engaging in protected activity with another person for the NLRA to protect them.
The kinds of activity Section 8 of the Act protects is extensive – the Act prohibits employers from discriminating against employees concerning any term or condition of employment.

Like the NLRA, M.G.L. c. 150E (the “Massachusetts Labor Relations Act”) vests broad powers to the Massachusetts Labor Relations Commission to enforce labor rights. Under Massachusetts law, employees are guaranteed the right to self-organization and to form and join labor groups to collectively bargain wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment.
Unlike the NLRA, c. 150E extends to public employees – public employers are not allowed to limit (1) the right to meet with individual employees on the public employer’s premises during the workday, (2) the right to conduct worksite meetings during lunchbreaks and other non-work breaks, or (3) the right to meet with newly-hired employees.If the public employee is a school employee, the employer must notify the exclusive representative that the employee has been hired within 10 calendar days of the hire date and must provide the exclusive representative with the new employee’s contact information.

The U.S. Supreme Court held that there is no affirmative obligation to do so under the Act in Smith.
In this case, the Arkansas State Highway Commission would not consider a grievance unless the employee submits his written complaint directly to the designated employer representative. The District Court and 8^th Circuit Court of Appeals held that this procedure violated the First Amendment because it denied the representing union the ability to submit effective grievances on the employees’ behalf.
The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, stating that the First Amendment does not guarantee that a speech will be persuasive or effective and holding that the First Amendment does not impose any affirmative obligation on the federal government to listen to, respond to, or recognize the association and bargain with it. Because the Commission did not prohibit its employees from joining a union, the Supreme Court held that this practice was constitutional and that public employers, including school districts, could ignore bargaining representatives altogether.
In his dissent, Justice Marshall questioned how the majority could come to this conclusion despite holding in previous cases that the First Amendment protects the right of unions to secure legal representation for their members and that public employers could not refuse to entertain a grievance submitted by a union-salaried attorney.