For the last couple years at the Washington Legislature, union lobbyists have been pushing variations of a proposal that would bar employers from holding meetings with employees, in which attendance is mandatory, in order to discuss matters such as religion, politics, and union organizing. (E.g., here, here, here, and here.) Although these bills have consistently failed, the employer community can be certain they will return with force in 2008.
It is rare, not to mention in poor taste, for employers to regale their workers with overt religious or political sermons. Clear thinkers, then, have seen the politics and religion part of these prohibitions as a fig leaf to hide what is in reality a gag order on employers opposing union organizing campaigns. Gagging employers from expressing their views to their workers on unionization not only violates federal labor law, but the free speech protections of the First Amendment as well. It also offends traditional notions of fair play -- the employer facing an organizing campaign is forced to play by Marquis of Queensbury Rules while the unions fight freestyle. AWB has strongly opposed the bills on these bases.
Union elites will undoubtedly be thrilled, though, to read about this lawsuit, reported today. Basically, a medical assistant and a nurse who used to work at a pediatric medical clinic in Puyallup allege they were forced to pray and subjected to religious-based harassment at staff meetings and otherwise within the clinic. The two filed a federal lawsuit claiming violations of the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act on the basis of a hostile work environment and discrimination on the basis of religion (or lack thereof).
I have no doubt this lawsuit will be dug up next session when labor pushes for its speech restrictions, furthering the canard that it is about protecting workers from on-the-job religious or political harassment as opposed to keeping employers from expressing opinions disfavored by unions.
What this lawsuit says to me, however, is that existing law and judicial resources are adequate to air these kinds of complaints and redress these kinds of grievances. No new laws -- especially ones as egregious as the Legislature has considered -- are necessary to root out these thankfully rare instances of human resource mismanagement.
