In overturning Purple Communications, the Board effectively reinstated a prior 2007 decision known as Register Guard, with one exception. 28-CA-060841, overturns the Board’s 2014 decision in Purple Communications, which held that work rules prohibiting employees from using employer-provided email systems for union activity were presumptively invalid.Īccording to the Caesars Entertainment majority, employees “do not have a statutory right to use employers’ email and other information-technology (IT) resources to engage in non-work-related communications.” “Rather, employers have the right to control the use of their equipment, including their email and other IT systems, and they may lawfully exercise that right to restrict the uses to which those systems are put, provided that in doing so, they do not discriminate” against activities protected by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, such as discussing wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment. The 3-1 decision in Caesars Entertainment Corp d/b/a Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino, NLRB Case No. On December 17, 2019, the National Labor Relations Board (“Board”) ruled that an employer’s rule prohibiting use of its email system for nonbusiness purposes did not violate employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act.
