In February 2009, AT&T telephone technicians represented by the Communication Workers of America union (CWA) and the company began negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement to replace a contract that was scheduled to expire in April 2009. Lengthy negotiations failed to produce an agreement, and the union became dissatisfied and planned a number of “mobilization” activities.

In August 2009, a CWA mobilization committee designed a “prisoner shirt” to be worn by employees. The front of the white shirt had the legend “INMATE #” above a black box. On the back of the shirt were vertical stripes and bars surrounding the message “PRISONER OF AT$T.” The union distributed the shirt to AT&T workers, including customer-facing employees. CWA committee members eliminated some stripes from their design so as to ensure that the shirt did not look too much like real prison garb. Although the committee did not discuss whether customers might think they were encountering real prisoners rather than AT&T workers, a union business agent testified that the employees would be wearing AT&T identification tags and driving clearly labeled company trucks, and contended, “You’d have to be an idiot to think that there was a prisoner at your front door.”
AT&T managers directed customer-facing employees not to wear the “inmate” shirts. After the company issued one-day suspensions to some workers who wore the shirt, CWA filed an unfair labor practice charge. Did AT&T employees have the right to wear the inmate shirts and union insignia while at work? Did it make a difference if customer-facing employees wore the shirts? Decide. [Southern New England Telephone Co. d/b/a AT&T Connecticut, 356 NLRB No. 118 (March 24, 2011)]