The publisher of the conservative online site The Federalist violated federal labor law by threatening staff who tried to organize a union for employees, Bloomberg News reports.
FDRLST Media publisher Ben Domenech tweeted that he would send any employer who tried to form a union “back to the salt mine” when he learned there was an organizing movement at the business.
“We find that employees would reasonably view the message as expressing an intent to take swift action against any employee who tried to unionize the Respondent,” the National Labor Relations Board said in a ruling Tuesday. “In addition, the reference to sending that employee ‘back to the salt mine’ reasonably implied that the response would be adverse.”
As happens every time conservatives are discovered to have said or done something illegal or offensive, the lawyer for FDRLST claimed that everyone had to get over it because it was just a joke.
“Today’s decision shows that NLRB lacks both common sense and a sense of humor,” attorney Aditya Dynar said in a statement. “It disregarded sworn employee statements saying that they perceived the tweet as just a joke.”