Court rules DirecTV can’t fire employees over TV interview

The nation’s second most powerful court upheld a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in a labor dispute between the DirecTV and employees of its subcontracting satellite installation company MasTec. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit court ruled 2-1 that DirecTV must reinstate the MasTec technicians it fired for complaining about the company’s new pay policy in an interview with a local news station. Employees that protest an employer action or policy are protected under NLRB rules from being retaliated against unless their actions rise to the level of "flagrant" or they say malicious or untrue statements about the employer.

In this case, DirecTV argued that the technicians were not protected under NLRB rules because the statements they made in the TV interview were "maliciously untrue and flagrantly disloyal, wholly out of step with the employees’ objections to the pay policy." NLRB disagreed and found that the company’s firing of the employees was an unfair labor practice. In it’s decision, the court upheld NLRB’s order requiring DirectTV to reinstate the employees.