A maintenance manager’s wrongful termination suit was not preempted by the NLRA since that act does not arguably protect or prohibit firing managers unless the firing directly interferes with the rights of statutorily protected, non-managerial employees. Here, there was no showing of such interference. Dang was supposedly terminated for his ill treatment of subordinates which led to their unionizing, but the workers had already voted for the union before Dang was terminated, so his firing didn’t interfere with their rights, and the NLRA therefore did not preempt Dang’s wrongful termination suit.
California Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 2 (Boren, P.J.); September 1, 2016 (published September 22, 2016); 2016 WL 5272661