After Nadella’s Advice on Raises, Can Microsoft Women Go to the NLRB?

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-13/after-nadellas-advice-on-raises-can-microsoft-women-go-to-nlrb


By Josh Eidelson October 13, 2014


Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella


It took just hours for Microsoft (MSFT) Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella to apologize and retract advice he offered onstage at a conference that discouraged female employees from asking for raises. The remark, he admitted in a companywide e-mail, was “completely wrong.” A more relevant question—and to be clear, Nadella’s apology has been effective enough that there aren’t many people asking it—is whether his comments could be grounds for female employees to complain to the National Labor Relations Board.

The 1935 National Labor Relations Act restricts companies from punishing or threatening punishment against workers who take collective action. What qualifies as “threatening” is open for debate; some experts, including a former chairman of the NLRB, think Nadella’s remarks are grounds for employees to seek intervention by the federal labor watchdog.

While onstage at a conference on women in technology, in response to a question about what he would tell women who are hesitant to ask for a raise, Nadella said:

It’s not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along. And that, I think, might be one of the additional superpowers that quite frankly women who don’t ask for a raise have. Because that’s good karma. It’ll come back, because somebody’s going to know that’s the kind of person that I want to trust. That’s the kind of person that I want to really give more responsibility to.

FULL story at link.