Protected Concerted Activity in the Non-Union Context: Limitations on the Employer\u27s Rights to Discipline or Discharge Employees

To the extent possible, this Article will be devoted to the situation in which there is no union or union organizational activity. It should be recognized that since the National Labor Relations Act does not distinguish between the statutory rights of union and non-union employees, many of the cases involving the protected concerted activities of union members are persuasive, if not binding, authority in the non-union context. The limitations placed by the Act on employers\u27 rights will be delineated by an examination of the four factors upon which the courts have placed emphasis-definition of the term concerted, proper purposes of concerted activity, the type of concerted activity involved, and the ways that a protected activity may lose its protection