NLRB Invites Briefs Signals a Possible Shift in Contract Bar Rules

On June 23, the Nationwide Labor Relations Board’s (Board or NLRB) issued a call in Mountaire Farms, Inc., 5-RD-256888 by which the Board granted assessment of a Regional Director’s determination making use of the Board’s contract bar doctrine, discovering that the case introduced substantial points warranting the NLRB’s assessment and asserting its intention to ascertain a schedule for the submitting of briefs on assessment and welcoming amicus briefs. On July 7, the Board acted on that intention and issued a Discover and Invitation To File Briefs within the case (Discover).

Underneath extant contract bar guidelines, relationship all the way in which again to the mid-50s, employees, employers and different unions are barred from elevating questions regarding an incumbent union’s consultant (QCR) standing through the lifetime of a collective bargaining settlement (CBA) until a QCR, usually within the type of an election petition, is well timed raised over the past 60 to 90 days of a CBA’s time period (to not exceed three years) or after the CBA has expired and, supplied, no signed successor CBA is in place. Incumbent unions have lengthy and repeatedly relied on the Board’s contract bar guidelines to protect their bargaining consultant standing, precluding employees from exercising their statutory proper to vote on the incumbent’s continued consultant standing and competing unions from difficult their continued majority help.

The Board’s July 7 Discover lists the problems by which the Board is and alerts the doable abandonment or modification of the Board’s contract bar guidelines and a serious shift in whether or not and the way in which the NLRB could entertain election petitions involving incumbent unions sooner or later. These points embrace the next:

whether or not the Board ought to rescind the contract bar doctrine;
whether or not the Board ought to retain it because it at the moment exists; or
whether or not the Board ought to retain the doctrine with modifications.

Additional as to subject quantity 3, the Board recognized and posed extra inquiries to be addressed in briefs together with:

a. the formal necessities for in accordance bar high quality to contract;

b. the circumstances underneath which an illegal contract clause would forestall a contract from barring an election (which is the idea of the Regional Director’s determination);

c. the period of the bar throughout which no QCR could be raised; and

d. how modified circumstances through the time period of a contract together with adjustments within the employer’s operation, organizational adjustments within the union and/or conduct by and between the events could have an effect on a contract’s bar high quality.

The briefs of the events are resulting from be filed with the Board on or by August 6, 2020. The briefs of amici are resulting from be filed by September 8. Click on right here to see the Discover. This vital determination is anticipated to subject subsequent 12 months.