## Facts

- Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS) provided communication services to Xerox Corporation and used outside service vendors to help resolve Xerox’s technical problems.
- EDS operated customer-support centers (CSCs) staffed with service representatives who took calls from Xerox and its customers about computer problems.
- When incoming calls involved telephone-line issues, CSC personnel transferred the caller to EDS’s network-operations center (NOC).
- EDS’s NOC employees regularly dealt with Rochester Telephone (Rochester), a vendor responsible for maintaining Xerox’s circuits and telephone lines, and contacted Rochester multiple times a day to address service problems.
- EDS employees in the relevant units were nonunion.
- Nettie Eaton, a CSC service representative, learned that Rochester’s employees would soon go on strike.
- Eaton sent an email to NOC employees announcing the imminent Rochester strike and asking for their “support.”
- Eaton sent a second email to CSC employees announcing the imminent strike and stating that anyone crossing Rochester’s picket line would “suffer the consequences.”
- Eaton also spoke with certain NOC employees and asked them not to call or otherwise interact with Rochester during the strike.
- EDS discharged Eaton shortly after these communications.
- Eaton filed an unfair-labor-practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging EDS terminated her for activity protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

## Issues

1. Whether Eaton’s emails and conversations urging coworkers to support Rochester’s impending strike and to refrain from dealing with Rochester during the strike were protected concerted activity under NLRA § 7.
2. Whether Eaton’s “suffer the consequences” statement stripped her conduct of NLRA protection as a threat or coercive misconduct.
3. Whether EDS violated NLRA § 8(a)(1) by discharging Eaton because of her protected concerted activity.

## Decision

- The NLRB held that Eaton’s communications with coworkers about supporting Rochester’s strike and honoring its picket line constituted protected concerted activity under NLRA § 7.
- The NLRB found EDS violated NLRA § 8(a)(1) by discharging Eaton because of that protected activity.
- The NLRB ordered remedial relief consistent with an unlawful-discharge finding, including reinstatement and make-whole relief, and required EDS to post a notice.

## Legal Principles

- NLRA § 7 protects concerted activity even in a nonunion workplace.
- Employee communications seeking coworker support in connection with a labor dispute can qualify as concerted activity when they are aimed at group action or mutual aid or protection.
- Employees may, in appropriate circumstances, support or honor another employer’s picket line; such solidarity activity can remain protected absent serious misconduct.
- Context matters in assessing forceful language used during labor-related speech; protection is lost only when the conduct amounts to true threats, coercion, or other serious misconduct.
- An employer violates NLRA § 8(a)(1) when it discharges an employee because the employee engaged in activity protected by § 7.

## Conclusion

In *Electronic Data Systems Corporation*, the NLRB concluded that Eaton’s emails and conversations urging coworkers to support Rochester Telephone’s imminent strike and not cross Rochester’s picket line were protected concerted activity under NLRA § 7, and that EDS violated § 8(a)(1) by discharging her for engaging in that protected activity.


Electronic Data Systems Corporation, 331 N.L.R.B. 343 (2000)