NLRB’s General Counsel’s Office Releases Seven New Advice Memos
On July 13, 2018, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) released seven new memos from its Division of Advice, which is part of the NLRB’s Office of the General Counsel. The memos resulted from requests for guidance by various NLRB Regional Directors on cases their offices were handling. The General Counsel’s office can release advice memos to the general public at its discretion after a case has been closed. The earliest of the seven memos was issued in 2014 and the latest is dated June 14, 2018.
In the latest memo, pertaining to Lyft, Inc., the NLRB's Division of Advice agreed with the conclusion by the Regional Director of the NLRB’s San Francisco field office that two rules in Lyft’s terms of service agreement involving intellectual property and confidentiality were lawful. The intellectual property rule barred use of the company’s logo without written permission, and the confidentiality rule barred individuals from using or disclosing so-called “user information” and other proprietary material relating to Lyft’s business. A union challenged the rules, alleging that they were illegally overbroad under the NLRB’s Boeing standard (which was recently clarified in a memo issued by the NLRB’s General Counsel)...