The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has overturned a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finding that a team-wear policy of non-union automaker Tesla violated federal labor law. Tesla’s policy required employees to wear t-shirts emblazoned with the company logo. It allowed employees to wear stickers with union insignia on the shirts, but it did not allow employees to wear t-shirts emblazoned with the union logo instead of the company logo. The NLRB concluded in 2022 that Tesla failed to show special circumstances justifying its team wear policy. In Tesla v. NLRB, the Fifth Circuit differentiated between a company policy that restricts employees’ apparel to a prescribed uniform and a policy that prohibits union communications and buttons. The appeals court ruled that an employer does not need to show special circumstances every time a company policy arguably infringes on union rights and that a company policy is not presumptively unlawful when it has a legitimate business purpose and does not discriminate against union communications.
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