In a decision released today, the National Labor Relations Board reversed prior law concerning confidentiality during open workplace investigations. Commenting on the employer rules in the case, the majority wrote:

The rules at issue do not broadly prohibit employees from discussing either discipline or incidents that could result in discipline. Rather, they narrowly require that employees not discuss investigations of such incidents or interviews conducted in the course of an investigation. Employees not involved in an investigation are free to discuss such incidents without limitation, and employees who are involved may also discuss them, provided they do not disclose information they either learned or provided in the course of the investigation. Further, the rules do not restrict employees from discussing workplace issues generally or limit the employees’ ability to discuss disciplinary policies and procedures. Finally, we note that the rules do not prohibit a union-represented employee from requesting the help of a union representative during such an investigation (if the Respondent’s employees were to unionize), pursuant to NLRB v. J. Weingarten, 420 U.S. 251, 267 (1975).

Apogee Retail LLC d/b/a Unique Thrift Store, 368 N.L.R.B. No. 144 (2019), slip op. at 8. The full decision can be found at this link.