Introduction
Lechmere, Inc had a retail store in Newington, Connecticut. It partly owned the shopping plaza’s parking lot where its employees parked their vehicles. There was a grassy place of land which was a public property that kept the lot away from the highway. It was directly a place where the local union organizers placed promotional handbills on the windshields of Lechmere employees’ cars. Lechmere Inc didn’t allow the organizers to use the lot, and they opted to use the public strip of land to distribute the handbills to employees entering in the morning and leaving in the evening.
The Ruling on the Case
The local 919 of the United Food and Commercial Workers reported on unfair labor cases to the NLRB. They claimed that Lechmere had violated section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act by barring them access to the parking lot. The NLRB accepted the union’s plea, and the Court of Appeals enforced that decision (Cihon and Castagnera 68).
The Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals ruling on three counts. One was that the rights in the NLRA can only affect the employees and not the unions or non-employee organizations. It is not a must that the employer allows non-employee union representatives to access the private property (Cihon and Castagnera 189).
The second argument was that section seven of the NLRA does not apply to non-employee union organizers except when the non-employee union representatives cannot communicate to the employees through the conventional channels. The union must prove that reasonable access to employees is infeasible.
Lastly, the union could not substantiate that there were obstacles hindering them from communicating with the employees. The workers did not live in the plaza. The size of the Metropolitan could not block them from accessing the employees. If the union had managed to contact at least 20 employees regarding the organization, then there were no obstacles reaching the workers (Cihon and Castagnera 270).
Dissenting Views about the Case
The Supreme Court erred in its ruling above. The union had tried to place a big advert in the newspaper about their intention to organize the Lechmere employees. There had not been a response to the advert. The option to walk to the parking lot and place handbills on the windshields had come up because it seemed like the only best alternative to get their attention (Cihon and Castagnera 270).
The Supreme Court’s decision to block the union from using the strip of grassy public land is tantamount to disallowing the public and unions from accessing any public land to organize. The public land is always available to the public including the unions unless otherwise advised for different purposes (Cihon and Castagnera 358).
The employees of the company are most often busy while at work. That is why they could not have access to the newspapers. Even if they got to read the advert, then they did not have time to respond. The small-time they get is when they spend with their family after work (Cihon and Castagnera 200).
The union could not reach the employees through the office telephone as well. It could happen because the company only had a direct line to the managers or that there were no telephones at the workplace. Most of these assumptions need validation from the Supreme Court because it seems that they did not carry out thorough investigations.
If the scenario were to be repeated today, perhaps the ruling could be very correct. At the time when this happened, there were no cell phones and the internet was not available too. The union could have failed to make use of the most available means of communication (Cihon and Castagnera 68).
The mobile phones would have been the best way to reach out to the employees. The message could easily reach them through the short message service. They could still call them directly. The internet could have come in handy. The union could have found the company’s website and posted their advert on the site. They could also send those emails either through the official company address or personal emails. Social networks like Skype, Facebook, etc would be easier and faster options. If the union could have failed to use these readily available means of communication, then the ruling could be justified.
The Supreme Court did not consider the fact that the union tried to reach the parking lot to place the handbills on the windshields of Lechmere employees. Their attempts hit a snag because the management advised them to keep off and even removed the leaflets they had placed. This kind of treatment symbolized the refusal of the store owners and managers to allow their employees to organize or join a union. The observation gets its strength from the fact that all of the two hundred employees are not members of any union (Cihon and Castagnera 410).
When the court uses the law in favor of private property rights, it must also consider union rights. The courts did not exhaustively use the union rights law. The ruling violated the rights of the union. The result could lead to other unions fearing to organize or agitate for membership drive.
Works Cited
Cihon, Patrick J, and James Castagnera. Employment & Labor Law. Mason, Ohio: Thomson/South-Western, 2008. Print.