> The NLRB protects workers’ legal right to engage in “concerted activity,” which is when two or more coworkers band together to address workplace issues.
The girl allegedly tried to "organize" other workers on Slack by telling employees who were already planning to resign to "not quit but to get fired".
No, it won't be/ First, because its the NLRB that needs to make its case, but more significantly because the legal protection against retaliation for workplace organizing doesn't depend at all on a determination as to whether the organizing was "warranted" by how bad the situation was:
29 USC Sec. 157: "Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 158(a)(3) of this title."
29 USC Sec. 158(a): "It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer- (1) to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 157 of this title;"
> Tweeted: “Don’t resign, let him fire you. You gain literally nothing out of resignation.”
> posted on Slack: “Don’t, be fired. Seriously.”
This just reads like someone giving advice to workers so they can get more $$. Without some more context this sounds like some hard spin by NRLB as if she was "organizing" workers against a "workplace issue". But I guess forcing a company to fire people is a expression of labour rights or something.
It is, yes; being fired vs resigning has impacts on unemployment insurance, for starters. Mass firings could involve EEO-related lawsuits while they would be much harder to prove if the affected employees "resigned." And mass firings of a sufficient number could trigger the WARN act for affected employees.
My UAW belonging grandfather who worked standing up on an auto line for 5 decades would probably have been ecstatic to sit in a Herman Miller office chair and eat free snacks all day. He bargained for an extra dollar or two an hour, or a day off or two a month—that was what was important to him, not “the office buys a brand of oat milk that I don’t prefer” level of discomfort we see today.