Lyft headquarters Lyft Inc. headquarters. Photo Credit: Jason Doiy/ALM

Lyft Inc.'s workplace policies addressing intellectual property and confidentiality comply with federal labor law, according to a National Labor Relations Board memo released Friday.

The memo, prepared by the head of the NLRB's Advice Division in the general counsel's office, said the ride-hailing company's rules for confidentiality and intellectual property do not interfere with the power of employees to participate in union-related activity. The memo indicated that the allegations a union brought against Lyft should be dismissed.

The memo incorporated President Donald Trump-appointed general counsel Peter Robb's new guidance on workplace handbooks. That new guidance, issued in June, “increases confidence that many workplace policies previously ruled invalid will not be challenged under the board's new legal standard,” management-side firm Littler Mendelson said in a post last month.

The memo, dated June 14 but released Friday, was prepared by Jayme Sophir, associate general counsel in the NLRB's Advice Division. The division provides advice to the agency's regional offices on novel issues of labor law. Sophir, who joined the division in 1988, was named associate general counsel in July 2017.

Teamsters Joint Council 7 alleged in 2016 that certain Lyft workplace rules were overly broad and impaired workers' rights under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.

A lawyer for the union, Sheila Sexton of Oakland's Beeson, Tayer & Bodine, was not immediately reached for comment. Harry Secaras, a shareholder at Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart in Chicago, represented Lyft. He did not immediately comment Friday.

Sophir determined Lyft's confidentiality policy was permissible because it was primarily directed at prohibiting the “disclosure of 'technical, financial, strategic and other proprietary' information,” as opposed to the sharing of information about working conditions.

“We conclude that employees would not reasonably interpret the rule to prohibit the sharing of information about working conditions or of employee names and contact information,” Sophir wrote.

Sophir noted that drivers use Lyft-created online forums to discuss their wages and other conditions, “which suggests that the parties clearly have not interpreted this rule as prohibiting those types of discussions.” Under those conditions, the NLRB legal staff concluded the confidentiality policy was unlikely to interfere with workers' rights.

Sophir also upheld Lyft's policies for preventing employees from using the ride-sharing company's logo without its approval. While the policy could be read to improperly prevent employees from using the Lyft logo on picket signs and leaflets, Sophir said employees usually understand that the policy is meant to prevent them from using the company's intellectual property for commercial and other uses unrelated to organizing activities.

“While employees might refrain from using the logo as part of their protected concerted activity, it would not stop the protected concerted activity itself,” she wrote.

“Employers have a significant interest in protecting their intellectual property, including logos, trademarks and service marks,” Sophir wrote. “Such property can be worth millions of dollars and be central to a company's business model.”

Sophir added: “Failure to police the use of such property can result in its loss, which can be a crippling blow to a company. Employers also have an interest in ensuring that employee social media posts and other publications do not appear to be official via the presence of the employer's logo.”

 

We've posted the NLRB's advice memo here:

 

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