Unifi Aviation, LLC, 19-RC-364995 (Unpublished Board Decision)
The Board denied the Employer’s request for review of a Regional Director’s decision resolving challenged ballots and objections, finding that the request raised no substantial issues warranting review.
The case centered on a text message the Employer sent to nearly half of the bargaining unit on election day. The Board found that this communication went beyond a lawful prediction about the effects of unionization and instead amounted to a threat of adverse consequences within the Employer’s control. Specifically, the text conveyed that if employees voted for the Union, they would likely lose the scheduling flexibility that allowed most of them to hold outside full-time jobs. Because that message threatened a loss tied to the Employer’s own choices rather than predicting objective economic consequences, the Board agreed with the Regional Director that it was objectionable conduct warranting a rerun election.
The Board also rejected the Employer’s argument that the text was protected speech under Section 8(c) of the NLRA. It explained that Section 8(c) operates only as a defense in unfair labor practice cases and does not provide guidance for evaluating conduct in representation elections. Even so, the Board noted that Section 8(c) would not shield threatening statements of the kind found here in any event.
Significant Cases Cited
NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U.S. 575 (1969): Employers may lawfully predict the economic consequences of unionization if based on objective fact, but statements that threaten retaliatory action within the employer’s control are not protected predictions.
Systems West LLC, 342 NLRB 851 (2004): Applied the standard distinguishing lawful predictions from unlawful threats in the context of election objections.
Hahn Property Management Corp., 263 NLRB 586 (1982): Section 8(c) of the Act applies only as a defense in unfair labor practice proceedings and does not govern the assessment of conduct affecting the validity of a representation election.
Sutphen Corporation, JD-68-26, 09-CA-366492 (ALJ Decision)
An administrative law judge found that Sutphen Corporation violated the NLRA by bargaining in bad faith with Teamsters Local 284 over a successor contract for workers at its Dublin, Ohio fire truck manufacturing facility.
The judge concluded that Sutphen engaged in unlawful surface bargaining from September 2024 through January 2026, looking at the totality of its conduct both at and away from the table. Before the parties’ prior contract expired, the company refused to meet face-to-face with the union, routed proposals through a mediator instead, and presented sweeping cuts to existing contract terms without explanation. After the union filed an unfair labor practice charge over that conduct, the company cut off bargaining entirely for eight months, despite the union’s and the mediator’s attempts to schedule sessions.
That dispute was resolved through an informal settlement in which Sutphen agreed to bargain in good faith going forward. The judge found the company instead continued the same pattern after the settlement. It was slow to resume meeting, made regressive proposals once bargaining restarted (including cutting its own earlier wage offer and adding a sweeping “act of God” exception that could gut a staffing guarantee), and withdrew a staffing proposal after the union lobbied the local city council, which the judge found was retaliatory. The company also twice refused to turn over information the union was entitled to for bargaining purposes and unlawfully stopped paying health insurance premiums for employees once they went on strike, since those premium payments were an accrued benefit under the expired contract rather than something tied to the strike.
The judge also found that the resulting employee strike, which ran from May 2025 until February 2026, was an unfair labor practice strike because the company’s unlawful conduct was at least a contributing cause.
As a remedy, the judge ordered Sutphen to bargain with the union for a minimum number of hours each month until an agreement or lawful impasse is reached, to file regular bargaining progress reports, to turn over the previously withheld information, to reimburse the union for bargaining expenses and strike-related assistance it provided to employees, and to make whole any employees who lost health insurance coverage during the strike.
Significant Cases Cited
Hawaiian Telcom, Inc., 365 NLRB 348 (2017): An employer unlawfully withholds accrued benefits from striking employees when a contract’s broad eligibility clause entitles all employees to the benefit without a time-in-service requirement.
NLRB v. Great Dane Trailers, 388 U.S. 26 (1967): Set out the framework for assessing whether an employer’s denial of benefits to strikers is unlawful, including when conduct is inherently destructive of employee rights.
Atlanta Hilton & Tower, 271 NLRB 1600 (1984): Bargaining in good faith requires a sincere purpose to find a basis of agreement, and mere pretense at negotiation does not satisfy the NLRA.
Public Service Co. of Oklahoma (PSO), 334 NLRB 487 (2001): An inference of bad-faith bargaining is warranted where an employer’s proposals, taken as a whole, would leave the union and employees with substantially fewer rights than they would have without any contract.
NLRB v. Acme Industrial Co., 385 U.S. 432 (1967): An employer must provide, upon request, relevant information a union needs to properly perform its duties as the collective-bargaining representative.
Metro One Loss Prevention Services Group (Guard Division NY) Inc., 375 NLRB No. 61, 29-CA-387808 (Published Board Decision)
Metro One Loss Prevention Services Group (Guard Division NY) Inc. was found to have unlawfully refused to bargain with Local One Security Officers Union, which had been certified as the exclusive bargaining representative of a unit of fire life safety directors at the company's Staten Island, New York facilities.
The company admitted that it had refused to recognize and bargain with the union, but it did so only to challenge the validity of the underlying certification. It argued that the Acting Regional Director for Region 22 erred by overruling its election objection without holding a hearing. The Board found that this issue, along with all other representation issues the company raised, had already been fully litigated in the prior representation case and that the company offered no newly discovered evidence or special circumstances that would justify revisiting that decision. Citing Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. NLRB, the Board held that such issues are not properly relitigated in an unfair labor practice proceeding.
The Board also rejected several of the company's affirmative defenses. It dismissed the claim that the complaint failed to state a claim, noting the company's own admission that it refused to bargain. It rejected, as unsupported and without merit, the company's argument that the charge was barred by the six-month statute of limitations in Section 10(b), since the charge was filed well within that window. It likewise rejected the company's bare assertion that Board administrative law judges are unconstitutionally insulated from removal, finding no evidence that the company suffered any harm from that arrangement.
Having granted summary judgment, the Board found that the company violated Section 8(a)(5) and (1) of the NLRA and ordered it to bargain with the union on request, to sign any agreement reached, and to post and distribute a remedial notice to employees. The Board also adjusted the certification year to run from the date the company actually begins bargaining in good faith, consistent with its standard remedy in refusal-to-bargain cases. Member Prouty, dissenting in part on remedy, stated he would have imposed additional remedies, including make-whole relief for provable economic harm, on-site union access, a bargaining schedule, and a longer notice-posting and reading requirement, based on his earlier dissent in Longmont United Hospital.
Significant Cases Cited
Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. NLRB, 313 U.S. 146 (1941): Representation issues that were or could have been litigated in a prior representation proceeding cannot be relitigated in a later unfair labor practice case absent newly discovered evidence or special circumstances.
Mar-Jac Poultry Co., 136 NLRB 785 (1962): Establishes that the certification year begins when the employer actually starts bargaining in good faith, not from the date of certification, when the employer has unlawfully delayed bargaining.
Biewer Wisconsin Sawmill, Inc., 306 NLRB 732 (1992): An employer's admission that it refused to bargain in order to test a union's certification supports a finding of an 8(a)(5) violation notwithstanding other denials in its answer.
Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corp., 366 NLRB No. 30 (2018): An employer's admitted refusal to bargain to test certification means the complaint states a claim upon which relief can be granted.
SJT Holdings, Inc., 372 NLRB No. 82 (2023): A constitutional challenge to ALJ removal protections fails without a showing that the respondent suffered actual harm from those protections.
Little Foundation for the Rehabilitation of Alcoholics, D/B/a Alina Lodge, JD-69-26, 22-CA-358049 (ALJ Decision)
An administrative law judge ruled that a New Jersey substance abuse treatment center illegally fired two employees who led a union organizing campaign, and ordered the facility to recognize and bargain with the union without an election.
The judge found that the Little Foundation for the Rehabilitation of Alcoholics, doing business as Alina Lodge, violated the NLRA when it laid off Edward Hilbrich and Anne Piazza within hours of them delivering a union recognition petition to a senior vice president and asking the company to voluntarily recognize the union. Both employees had served as lead organizers for the Health Professionals and Allied Employees, AFT/AFL-CIO, openly collecting authorization cards from coworkers for months before their firings.
The judge credited testimony that management knew about the organizing campaign well before the layoffs, pointing to a supervisor's angry outburst about an employee "trying to unionize my staff" and to a company director's admission that the campaign was common knowledge among management. He rejected as not credible the testimony of two managers who claimed they learned of the union activity only after the firings.
Alina argued the layoffs were driven by financial necessity, but the judge found this reasoning pretextual. An expert witness testified that the layoffs had only a minimal effect on the company's finances, since payroll costs actually rose by $580,000 in the following year even as the company claimed to be cutting costs. The judge also noted that Alina's stated reasons for the firings shifted repeatedly, from vague complaints about the employees not fitting the company culture, to budgetary reasons, to performance and seniority, which further suggested the explanations were not genuine. He also drew an adverse inference from the company's failure to call the executive who made the final layoff decision to testify.
The judge separately found that severance agreements offered to the laid-off workers violated the law because their non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses were overly broad and had no time limit, following the standard set in McLaren Macomb.
Applying the framework from NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., the judge concluded that a bargaining order was warranted rather than a new election. He found that firing the two lead organizers was a "hallmark violation" carried out by top company officials almost immediately after the recognition demand, that news of the firings spread quickly through the workforce, and that the union's support collapsed afterward as employees grew fearful of retaliation. Because the union had already demonstrated majority support among employees before the unlawful conduct occurred, the judge determined that a fair election was no longer possible and that the employees' prior preference for the union would be better protected by requiring the company to bargain directly.
The decision orders Alina Lodge to reinstate Hilbrich and Piazza with backpay, rescind the unlawful severance provisions, recognize and bargain with the union, and have the remedial notice read aloud to employees by senior management.
Significant Cases Cited
NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U.S. 575 (1969): Established that a bargaining order may be imposed without an election when an employer's unfair labor practices make a fair election unlikely, provided the union once had majority support.
Wright Line, 251 NLRB 1083 (1980): Set out the burden-shifting framework for determining whether an adverse employment action was unlawfully motivated by protected activity.
McLaren Macomb, 372 NLRB No. 58 (2023): Held that severance agreements with overly broad, indefinite non-disparagement or confidentiality clauses violate the NLRA.
Kentucky River Community Care v. NLRB, 532 U.S. 706 (2001): Clarified the standard for determining supervisory status under Section 2(11), including what counts as exercising independent judgment.
Starbucks Corp., 374 NLRB No. 10 (2024): Addressed the role of high-level management involvement and its coercive impact in assessing the appropriateness of a bargaining order.
Friends of New York Transit Museum, 29-UC-387687 (Regional Election Decision)
A regional director of the National Labor Relations Board has resolved a dispute over which job classifications belong in a bargaining unit at the Friends of the New York Transit Museum, the nonprofit affiliate of the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn.
After District Council 37, AFSCME was certified as the bargaining representative for a unit of museum educators, visitor experience facilitators, and marketing coordinators, the union filed a petition asking that five additional job classifications be added to the unit. The employer opposed adding any of them, arguing that three were supervisors under the NLRA and therefore excluded from collective-bargaining protections, and that a fourth handled confidential information.
The regional director found that Family and Access Programs Assistant Managers and School Youth and Group Programs Coordinators should be added to the unit. Neither position could hire, fire, discipline, or make binding scheduling decisions over other employees, since their recommendations could be and sometimes were overruled by higher-level managers. The director noted that job descriptions listing these positions as supervisors amounted only to "paper authority," which is not enough to establish supervisory status under the Act. Both positions also shared enough in common with unit employees, such as shared supervisors, shared workspace, and regular interaction with museum educators, to establish a community of interest.
By contrast, the director found that Registrars and Rights and Reproduction Specialists should remain excluded from the unit because they did not share a community of interest with unit employees. These positions worked in different locations, reported to different supervisors, performed different tasks, and had little meaningful interaction with unit employees.
The Development Coordinator was also excluded. The director rejected the employer's argument that the position was confidential, noting that although the coordinator had access to sensitive information like donor records and salaries, nothing showed the position assisted with formulating or implementing labor relations policy, which is required for confidential status under the Act. The Development Coordinator still fell outside the unit, however, because he worked in a separate office, had different wages and benefits, and had no functional overlap with unit employees.
Significant Cases Cited
NLRB v. Kentucky River Community Care, Inc., 532 U.S. 706 (2001): Established that supervisory status requires possessing one of the enumerated statutory powers, exercising independent judgment, and acting in the employer's interest, and that the party asserting supervisory status bears the burden of proof.
Oakwood Healthcare, Inc., 348 NLRB 686 (2006): Clarified that judgment is not "independent" when it follows detailed instructions or when the correct choice is obvious, but considering employees' skills or training in work assignments can constitute independent judgment.
NLRB v. Hendricks County Rural Electric Membership Corp., 454 U.S. 170 (1981): Approved the "labor nexus" test for determining confidential employee status under the Act.
MV Transportation, Inc., 373 NLRB No. 8 (2023): Clarified that unit clarification petitions addressing classifications that voted subject to challenge use the same standard that would have applied had the issue been litigated before the election.
Hausner Hard-Chrome of KY, Inc., 326 NLRB 426 (1998): Held that authority to evaluate employees' performance is insufficient to establish supervisory status when the evaluations are not shown to directly or systematically affect raise or promotion decisions.