Back in August, Region 2 of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that WeWork had violated the National Labor Relations Act. The coworking company had violated the Act by including coercive language in their personnel handbook, which was distributed to approximately 1,200 employees in the United States.
This past Friday, September 23rd, WeWork signed the settlement sent by the NLRB. However, a source with knowledge from WeWork, has said that the settlement hasn’t been finalized yet. Nonetheless, part of the agreement states that WeWork must revise its employee handbook.
A WeWork spokesperson sent the following statement to Allwork:
“The NLRB asked WeWork to revise provisions in the Employee Handbook and NDA that it believed could be misconstrued as prohibiting employees from conduct that is protected by the National Labor Relations Act (the NLRA), such as discussing wages and compensation, or other terms and conditions of employment. As part of a voluntary settlement, WeWork agreed to make those revisions. While we do not believe that any of WeWork’s policies or procedures in the Employee Handbook or NDA prohibit employees from discussing their terms and conditions of employment, we nevertheless have updated our materials to make sure this language is absolutely clear.”
A representative from Local 153 OPEIU, the entity that filed the charge against unfair labor practices, gave the following statement: “The Office and Professional Employees International Union is pleased that WeWork is finally being held accountable for violating federal labor law, and will be required to maintain an open environment where employees have the freedom to speak out on work issues.”
A WeWork source with knowledge of the situation has also provided us with the following information:
The case at hand is separate from the complaint filed by ex-employee Tara Zoumer.
The source also claims that WeWork was already in the process of updating its employee handbook before this settlement took place. According to the source, some of the provisions that the NLRB has flagged had already been updated in this new version of the handbook.
The NLRB is not forcing WeWork to change its provision. WeWork is doing this voluntarily following the NLRB’s ruling that they could potentially be violating the National Relations Labor Act, so WeWork has decided to reword some clauses and remove others entirely from its handbook.
And lastly, the source mentioned that WeWork will send and post a notice to all its employees.
