## Facts

- Alstate Maintenance, LLC provided ground services at JFK Airport’s Terminal One; Trevor Greenidge worked as a skycap whose earnings largely depended on passenger tips.
- A manager directed Greenidge and other skycaps to assist a professional soccer team with luggage.
- In front of coworkers and a supervisor, Greenidge said, “We did a similar job a year prior and we didn’t receive a tip for it.”
- The skycaps did not immediately assist when signaled; baggage handlers began the work, and the skycaps later helped finish.
- A customer complaint followed, and Alstate discharged Greenidge (and others) for unsatisfactory performance and customer-service issues arising from the incident.
- Greenidge filed an unfair-labor-practice charge alleging discharge for protected concerted activity under NLRA § 7, violating § 8(a)(1).

## Issues

1. Whether Greenidge’s remark about not receiving a tip on a prior similar job constituted “concerted activity” under NLRA § 7.
2. If concerted, whether the remark was made for “mutual aid or protection” and thus protected by § 7.
3. Whether Board precedent treating certain workplace statements as “inherently concerted,” including *WorldMark by Wyndham*, should be followed or rejected as inconsistent with *Meyers Industries*.

## Decision

- The Board (majority) adopted the ALJ’s dismissal of the complaint and found no § 8(a)(1) violation.
- The Board held Greenidge’s statement was not concerted activity because it was a personal gripe, not made with or on the authority of other employees or to initiate group action.
- The Board held that, even assuming concertedness, the remark was not for mutual aid or protection because it was not directed toward improving workplace conditions through collective means.
- The Board overruled *WorldMark by Wyndham* to the extent it treated similar statements as inherently concerted based largely on setting or pronoun use.
- One member dissented.

## Legal Principles

- Under *Meyers Industries*, activity is “concerted” only when undertaken with or on the authority of other employees, or when it seeks to initiate, induce, or prepare for group action, or to present a group complaint to management.
- A statement made in a group setting, or using “we/us,” does not by itself establish concerted activity without evidence of a group purpose or a link to collective employee action.
- Protected activity under § 7 requires both (1) concertedness and (2) a mutual-aid-or-protection objective; individual complaints lacking a collective aim are unprotected.
- Board law should not treat certain subjects (e.g., compensation) as automatically concerted without record evidence showing group-related action or intent.

## Conclusion

The NLRB upheld the dismissal of an § 8(a)(1) discharge allegation, concluding a skycap’s tipping-related remark was an individual complaint rather than protected concerted activity and rejecting precedent that inferred concertedness from generalized workplace topics or the use of collective pronouns in front of coworkers.


Alstate Maint., LLC, 367 N.L.R.B. No. 68 (2019)