BY: Ally Brown, Junior Staffer

In November 2024, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) overturned a nearly 80-year precedent on captive-audience meetings in Amazon.com Services LLC. Captive-audience meetings are mandatory employer-led meetings where employers can express views on unionization, politics, and religion during work hours. Under threat of discipline or discharge for leaving early or failure to attend, employers previously used the meetings to push anti-unionization views, interrogate employees on organizing efforts, and threaten workers. While the decision banned mandatory anti-union captive-audience meetings, employers may still hold voluntary meetings on unionization and mandatory meetings on politics or religion.

Companies—including Target, Starbucks, and Amazon—have historically used captive-audience meetings to prevent unionization. This tactic was especially pervasive during a wave of union organizing efforts surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, in 2022, Trader Joe’s hosted captive-audience meetings, among other anti-unionization tactics, to share anti-union views. The grocery store also hosted one-on-one and small group meetings to tell workers that unionizing could lead to fewer benefits and less collaborative relationships with managers. Alternatively, during an employee organizing campaign in 2021, REI made misleading comments on the cooperative nature of the company during mandatory meetings. However, workers saw through these tactics and ultimately voted to unionize in a landslide election.

The NLRB ruled captive-audience meetings were illegal after Amazon workers in Staten Island filed a complaint over the company’s conduct during the warehouse’s successful organizing effort in 2022. Amazon often held more than 20 anti-union meetings per day for up to four weeks at their Staten Island warehouses. At the meetings, Amazon alleged unionization could mean workers “potentially end up with less” wages and benefits, even though this is an infrequent outcome. Additionally, an Amazon worker in Alabama filed a complaint with the NLRB, accusing the company of surveilling him after he questioned a manager during a captive-audience meeting. Many workers at the Alabama warehouse reported the anti-unionization efforts—including captive-audience meetings and anti-union texts—ultimately swayed them against unionization.

In overruling Babcock & Wilcox Co., the NLRB held captive-audience violated Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”), as the meetings had a “reasonable tendency to interfere with and coerce” employees who were exercising their rights under Section 7.¹

The majority found the captive-audience meeting interfered with employees’ exercise of Section 7 rights in three distinct ways. First, these meetings violated the Section 7 rights of employees to “the degree to which [they] will participate in the debate concerning representation” free from employer coercion. While employers can hold unlimited presentations in the workplace, unions do not have the same guaranteed access to workers to combat misinformation and mischaracterizations. The majority acknowledged while an employer can determine the work an employee conducts, the captive-audience meetings are actually “meddling in the decision-making sphere that, under the Act, belongs exclusively to employees: namely, whether, when, and how employees choose to exercise their Section 7 rights or to refrain from doing so.”

Second, the compulsive nature of the meetings allowed employers to “observe and surveil” employees exercising their Section 7 rights. Before this ruling, Amazon workers in Staten Island accused Amazon officials of asking for the badges of employees who made skeptical comments during the meetings. While Amazon stopped the practice, workers said the company then prevented outspoken workers from attending future meetings.

Third, since employers can discipline or discharge employees who fail to attend the meetings, the majority said the employer’s message in those meetings is “reasonably likely to take on a similarly coercive character.” Former General Counsel of the NLRB Jennifer Abruzzo—who had previously issued a memo in 2022 stating she would ask the board to find captive-audience meetings a violation of the NLRA—said, “There is a threat. … It’s inherent because these workers are economically dependent upon their employer. They have no true ability to exercise their right to refrain without fear of some sort of reprisal.”

While Amazon appealed the NLRB decision up to the Eleventh Circuit in March 2025 on First Amendment grounds, the majority anticipated this challenge, explicitly arguing the plain meaning of the NLRA and legislative history demonstrate that Congress intended to only protect employers’ non-coercive speech. Under this ruling, employers can still express views on unionization at voluntary meetings as long as employees are not subject to discipline or discharge if they miss the meetings and the employer does not take attendance.

Though the NLRB’s decision was limited to captive-audience meetings, companies use a host of other “union avoidance” techniques may also violate Section 8(a)(1) of the Act, that include surveilling employees, spending millions on anti-union law firms, and firing managers for failing to support anti-union campaigns. 

These tactics—surveillance, anti-union law firm campaigns, and manager firings—may violate employees’ exercise of Section 7 rights in the same three distinct ways as in Amazon.com Services LLC. Like captive-audience meetings, the union avoidance techniques prevent employees from engaging in debate on unionization free from employee coercion; the tactics create a climate of fear and intimidation that interferes with employee’s decision-making.

Surrounding employee unionization efforts in 2022, Amazon paid anti-union consultants over $4 million to talk directly to workers about unionizing and train supervisors to combat support for unions. If employees cannot opt out of these messages from well-paid and highly trained consultants, the NLRB may similarly rule the messages are coercive in nature.

Though Amazon said its surveillance isn’t conducted to prevent unionization, Amazon has purchased software to visualize union data, surveilled employee listservs and Facebook groups, and used heatmaps to track employees. Since the majority ruled captive-audience meetings violate Section 7 because employers used the meetings to “observe and surveil” employees, the Board could similarly rule other employee surveillance techniques unlawfully interfere with employee’s Section 7 rights.

Lastly, considering the majority in Amazon.com Services LLC found the practice of disciplining or discharging employees was “reasonably likely” to take on a “coercive character,” the majority could also find the practice of firing managers that fail to support anti-union campaigns similarly coercive. In 2022, Amazon abruptly fired senior managers at the Staten Island warehouse that unionized, and REI fired a manager for allegedly not reporting union organizing. While manager firings do not impact organizing workers directly, the practice creates a culture of fear of similar retribution for organizing efforts.

Though the status of the ruling is unknown—due to the Trump Administration and corporate pushback—a federal court recently reinstated Gwynne Wilcox to the Board. Since she was part of the majority that voted to ban captive-audience meetings, the Board may further explore banning other coercive corporate tactics that violate Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act, such as surveillance, anti-union law firm campaigns, and manager firings.

1.  Section 7 of the Act states that employees 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,” as well as the right “to refrain from any or all such activities.” Additionally, Section 8(a)(1) of the Act enforces Section 7 by making it unlawful for an employer “to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section [7].” ↩︎