On September 1, 2011, we sent an update discussing the new NLRB requirement that employers post a unionization rights notice on their bulletin boards. The text of that original update is available here. The original due date for the posting was November 14, 2011. On October 5, 2011, however, the NLRB moved the posting due date to January 31, 2012. On December 23, 2011, due to an on-going legal challenge to the notice requirement, the NLRB postponed the due date to April 30, 2012.
Last Friday, a federal court in the District of Columbia upheld the notice requirement. Therefore, unless another court rules that the notice requirement is invalid, or unless the NLRB again postpones the due date, April 30, 2012 remains the date by which employers must post the notice.
Although the federal court upheld the notice requirement, it also ruled that the NLRB could not – as it intended to do – automatically consider the failure to post the notice to be an unfair labor practice or automatically extend the statute of limitations for filing an unfair labor practice charge. The federal court, however, limited this holding by noting that a failure to post can be considered by the NLRB on a case by case basis to be evidence of an unfair labor practice and also a factor to consider when determining whether the statute of limitations should be extended.
