Some of our workers are putting political stickers all over their hard hats. We don't have a written policy about political activity in our workplace.

I researched OSHA regs  online, but didn't find anything specific to this situation.

Should we just ignore this? There haven't been any political arguments--yet.

Religion & politics don’t mix at work. I would suggest that you discourage the displaying of one political party over the other, but rather encourage the choice to vote come November. It is better to be bipartisan, then creating a potential hostile work environment for some EEs.

Since you have no policy regarding political displays you need to be very careful in asking your ee's to remove them so you don’t look like you are discriminating against one political party for another. 

Do you supply the hardhats?  Do you allow employees to write other sayings on their hardhats, other than say their name or job site location?  I don't think that you can regulate weather or not a political argument will take place or not.  Do you want to go so far as to ban vehicles will political bumper stickers to park in your lot?  You can't regulate every aspect of the workplace.  What you can regulate is how you react if an argument get heated and disrupts the work flow.  That becomes a different issue. 

 

pammcconnell:

I don't think that you can regulate weather or not a political argument will take place or not.

Actually, you can, in non-governmental employment.  Public employees have certain free speech rights but nobody else does.  Your employer can require you to say, "George Bush is the best president ever" every time you walk through a doorway and discipline you for failing to do so.  Your employer can tell you that you may not, on company time or property, speak about the presidential race.

Of course, whether or not any of that is a good idea is a different story but you certainly can do it.

But TXHRGuy, didn't we have a discussion about stuff like this a couple of months ago?  If I remember correctly it was regarding the NLRB getting involved because employers were trying to limit what employees talked about?  Or was it just about work related matters?  I thought for sure that we talked about the NLRB having an issue with employers limiting what their employees were talking about in work areas.

TXHRGuy,

My point was not so much that you legally can't regulate, but rather, you will drive yourself nuts trying to regulate what everyone talks about.  Companies for years have had policies about not talking about your compensation, yet we all know it happens everyday.  At some point you need to let your employees work it out for themselves. 

Your example of being required to say "George Bush is the best president ever" is valid, but once those employees walk through that door and get together at lunch or over their cubical wall, unless you listen to every word they utter, you can't practically stop them from saying "He's the worst president ever."  If you hear it can you discipline, sure, but you will spend most of your day running after your employees listening in.  Though it does bring up a funny mental picture. 

 

IT HR:

But TXHRGuy, didn't we have a discussion about stuff like this a couple of months ago?  If I remember correctly it was regarding the NLRB getting involved because employers were trying to limit what employees talked about?  Or was it just about work related matters?  I thought for sure that we talked about the NLRB having an issue with employers limiting what their employees were talking about in work areas.

The NLRB gets interested when employers try to proscribe employees discussions about the terms and conditions of their work.  Many companies used to prevent employees frmo talking about their pay plans and the NLRB has said that pay plans are part of terms and conditions of work and, therefore, employees engaged in protected concerted activity when they discussed such things.  You'd have to be able to show that talking about political matters is protected concerted activity.  This isn't the same as saying non-managerial employees can not discuss the terms and conditions of their work.  However, there's plenty of gray space in there.  For example, if two non-managerial employees are discussing how poor the insurance is and about the differences between Obama's and Clinton's national health care plans and which would be better for them in light of their poor insurance at work, then that may well be allowed under NLRB protection.  Alternatively, talking about which candidate is most likely to quickly minimize US presence in Iraq has nothing to do with the terms and conditions of work unless, perhaps in the context of wondering when/whether there will be a layoff at an ammunition manufacturing plant.

pammcconnell:

My point was not so much that you legally can't regulate, but rather, you will drive yourself nuts trying to regulate what everyone talks about.  Companies for years have had policies about not talking about your compensation, yet we all know it happens everyday.

Absolutely.  I don't think it's a good idea to restrict employee speech very much.  It's not like people weren't talking about pay plans on the phone before the NLRB stepped in and said that they could.  I'm just saying that it's legally permissible (appropriate caveats about hate speech, NLRB concerns, etc.) to place restrictions on speech in the workplace, even some restrictions that are extreme to the point of silliness.

If the hard hats belong to the companies, that's one thing. However, 2302(b) of Title 5 of the United States Code (U.S.C.) states that you cannot coerce the political activity of any person. I would advise caution when proceeding with this.