Court Affirms Workers' Rights to Determine Size of Bargaining Units
In a ruling last week , the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a 2011 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that provided that employees can petition for an election in smaller units so long as the employees share a community of interest, rejecting Specialty Healthcare's claim that the NLRB overstepped its bounds. The company originally attempted to prevent a group of nursing assistants from forming a union without also including all other nonprofessional employees.
The nurses argued, and the NLRB agreed, that those other workers didn't share an "overwhelming community of interest" with the nurses and shouldn't vote in the election. The Court ruled that the NLRB had broad discretion to determine the appropriate employees that should be included in a bargaining unit and unless the employer can show that the decision is "arbitrary, unreasonable, or an abuse of discretion," the NLRB's decisions should stand. In the Specialty Healthcare case, the Court found that the NLRB acted properly.
“Opponents of the NLRB tried to score cheap political points by misrepresenting to the public what this case is about,” said Jeff Hauser, a spokesman for AFL-CIO. “As the court unanimously found, the decision falls easily within the NLRB’s traditional authority.”
In effect, the Court ruled that workers, not employers, have the right to decide with whom they wish to take collective action and that the Board was correct in preventing employer tactics that undercut workers' rights to collectively bargain by diluting union support in a larger unit. While it's difficult to speculate about motives in a specific case, employers often attempt to force more employees into a potential bargaining unit in hopes that the bigger group would be more likely to vote against forming a union.
Read the full ruling .
