Wal-Mart and McDonald’s have recently been the scenes of mass demonstrations by employees and nonemployees protesting over wages and working conditions. But does a company have to allow those who don’t work there to demonstrate, solicit or handbill on its property?
As Snell & Wilmer of counsel Gerard Morales explains in a Legal Alert, the National Labor Relations Board is in charge of deciding disputes involving demonstrator access to employer property. He says generally speaking, the NLRB will allow a company to restrict nonemployees from its premises as long as the following conditions are met:
- The action is limited to those who don’t work there.
- There is a sufficient property interest to maintain a trespass action under state law.
- The restriction is applied on a nondiscriminatory basis, meaning not only to labor disputes.
