One Flyer, a Nationwide NLRB Notice

A postal worker pinned a cartoon to a breakroom bulletin board. It just cost the U.S. Postal Service a nationwide unfair-labor-practice notice. This is a useful handbook audit warning for employers.

In USPS (374 NLRB No. 132, decided June 11), the NLRB held the agency violated Section 8(a)(1) two ways: by maintaining a solicitation rule barring employees from “collecting signatures on petitions, polls, or surveys” on its property, and by telling a Virginia driver he couldn’t post workplace-safety flyers on the community bulletin board.

The rule came straight out of a federal postal regulation. Didn’t matter.

Per the Board, under the Stericycle standard, a workplace rule is presumptively unlawful if an employee could reasonably read it as chilling protected activity. A blanket solicitation ban — with no line between work and nonwork time — fit the bill. USPS could not show a narrower rule would not achieve the same intent.

Two defenses worth flagging: “the rule only applies to the public” and “the union waived it in the contract.” Both failed. Waivers of Section 7 rights have to be clear and unmistakable.

The takeaway: audit your handbook now. Stericycle still governs, and old, broad rules are sitting ducks.

When did you last read your no solicitation policy? Does it comply with Stericycle?