WHAT IF THE FACTS WERE DIFFERENT? If management employees had interrupted union-organizing activities twenty-five times rather than just two, would the outcome of this case have been different? Why or why not?

THE LEGAL ENVIRONMENT DIMENSION An administrative law judge (ALJ) originally ruled that the two brief verbal interruptions by the company’s human resources managers were in violation of the National Labor Relations Act. Why might the ALJ have made this ruling?

Aladdin Gaming, LLC, operates a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. On May 30, 2003, Local Joint Executive Board of Las Vegas and two other unions began an open campaign to organize Aladdin’s housekeeping, food, and beverage departments. On two occasions during this campaign, human resources managers at Aladdin (Tracy Sapien and Stacey Briand) approached union organizers who were discussing unionization with employees in an employee dining room during a lunch break. Sapien and Briand interrupted the organizers while they were obtaining signatures on authorization cards and asked whether the employees had been fully informed of the facts before signing. The unions filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) claiming that the managers’ actions were illegal surveillance in violation of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The NLRB ruled in favor of Aladdin, and the unions appealed.