Union Member Rights

The National Labor Relations Board protects the rights of most private-sector employees to join together, with or without a union, to improve their wages and working conditions. Here are some of the legal rights protected by the NLRB.

Your Rights At Work

Working people in America have certain basic legal rights to safe, healthy and fair conditions at work.

Rights of Union Stewards

Steward have equal status with management, the right to solicit grievances and the right to active participation in a Weingarten setting.

Weingarten Rights

Employees have a right to union representation at investigatory interviews.

National Labor Relations Act

Section 1

“It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.”

Section 7

“Employees shall have the right to self organization, to form, join or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)3.”

Section 8

“It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer:

(1) to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of rights guaranteed in Section 7.

(2) to dominate or interfere with the formation . . . of any labor organization . . .

(3) by discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment, to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization . . .

(4) to discharge or otherwise discriminate against an employee because he filed charges or given testimony under this Act.

(5) to refuse to bargain collectively with the representative of his employees.