The handbook is not a contract.
A handbook tells you what your employer expects. It does not override federal or state law. Some policies are enforceable. Some are not. Here's how to tell the difference.
What a handbook actually is
Under Texas law, an employee handbook is generally considered a set of guidelines, not a binding employment contract. Employers can change handbook policies at any time. That cuts both ways. It means they can take things away, but it also means the handbook doesn't supersede your legal rights.
Policies that cannot override the law
No handbook policy can legally prohibit or restrict the following:
- Discussing pay and working conditions with coworkers. This is protected by the NLRA regardless of what any handbook says.
- Filing a complaint with a government agency (EEOC, NLRB, OSHA, TWC). No policy can require you to handle grievances internally first.
- Refusing to participate in illegal activity. An employer cannot discipline you for declining to do something unlawful.
- Taking protected leave under FMLA or ADA if you qualify. Handbook attendance policies cannot override federal leave rights.
- Reporting safety violations to OSHA. Whistleblower protections exist at both state and federal levels.
Policies that are generally enforceable
- Dress codes and grooming standards (with religious and disability exceptions).
- Social media policies regarding company accounts and representation. (They cannot restrict personal accounts discussing working conditions.)
- Confidentiality of actual trade secrets and client information.
- Standards of professional conduct during work hours.
Some handbook policies are written broadly enough to sound like they restrict protected activity. A blanket "no outside employment" policy or a "no discussing company business" policy may be unenforceable to the extent it conflicts with Section 7 rights. The NLRB has struck down policies like these repeatedly.
The NLRB has already decided this. In Costco Wholesale Corp. (358 NLRB 1100, 2012), the Board found that a social media policy broad enough to discourage employees from discussing working conditions was unlawfully overbroad. If a policy could reasonably be read to restrict protected commentary about wages, management, or workplace issues on personal accounts, the policy itself may be the violation, not the employee who posted.
When policies change
Texas employers can change handbook policies with notice. They are not required to grandfather existing employees into old policies. However, if you have a separate written employment contract (not the handbook) that guarantees specific terms, those terms may be enforceable even after a handbook revision. Most at-will employees do not have such contracts.
If you believe a new policy violates your rights, you have options. Here's how to file a complaint.
Confidential doesn't mean what you think
Broad confidentiality policies are common. They typically cover agency finances, marketing strategies, suppliers, clients, and potential clients. That language sounds sweeping. Employees sometimes read it and assume any internal discussion is off-limits. That's not how it works.
The NLRA protects your right to discuss wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions with your coworkers. No employer confidentiality policy overrides that. The NLRB has been clear on this point for decades. If a policy is written broadly enough to chill those conversations, the policy is the problem, not the conversation.
Actual confidential information looks like this:
- Client names and campaign details.
- Proprietary financial data and trade secrets.
- Pitches, strategies, and unpublished creative work.
Your salary is not on that list. Your PTO balance is not on that list. How you feel about your workload or your manager is not on that list. Those are protected. Talking about them with a coworker is legal. No handbook clause changes that.
Bereavement
The handbook provides 24 hours of paid bereavement leave for the death of an immediate family member. That is three days. Your parent dies. You get three days. Your spouse dies. Three days. Your child dies. Three days. There is no federal or Texas law requiring any bereavement leave. This is what the company chose to offer. After that, you use your PTO. The PTO they just cut.
The freelance ban
Some handbooks include an absolute prohibition on outside employment. The language typically reads something like: full-time employees are not permitted to engage in freelance work or hold other jobs, and violation will subject an employee to termination.
That's a total ban. No exceptions. No review process. No consideration of whether the outside work competes with the employer or creates any actual conflict of interest.
The NLRB has scrutinized blanket outside employment policies when they're written broadly enough to discourage protected activity. A policy that effectively prevents employees from working with labor organizations, community groups, or other advocacy efforts on their own time can run into Section 7 of the NLRA. That doesn't make every outside employment ban automatically unenforceable. It means the breadth raises legitimate questions worth understanding.
If your employer enforces an outside employment ban selectively, or uses it against an employee who was engaging in protected activity, that enforcement itself may be an unfair labor practice. Document the timeline. The sequence matters.
Your personal creative work is yours
The handbook says all creative work developed for the agency is SMG's property. That is standard work-for-hire under copyright law. But work-for-hire has limits. It covers what you create within the scope of your employment, on company time, using company resources. Work you create on your own time, on your own equipment, for your own purposes, outside the scope of what SMG hired you to do is yours. The handbook cannot override copyright law. If you paint on weekends, that painting is not SMG's property. If you build a website on your personal laptop for a personal project, that is not SMG's property. The distinction matters, especially when the handbook also bans outside employment.
Nothing in the handbook is guaranteed
Most handbooks include two statements that employees don't always read together. First: the employer can change any policy at any time, for any reason, and without notice. Second: the handbook does not constitute a contract.
That means everything in there, the PTO structure, the benefits package, the holiday schedule, all of it, can change tomorrow. No warning required. No grandfather clause required.
If the handbook isn't a contract binding you, it isn't a contract binding them either. Their stated commitments aren't enforceable promises. In an at-will state like Texas, you can be terminated for violating a handbook policy. But you haven't breached a contract, because there was no contract. That's the tradeoff built into the system. Know it going in.
If you have a separate written employment agreement, that's a different analysis. But if the handbook is the only document governing your terms, understand what it actually is: a statement of current intent that can be revised at will.