To Read Our Amicus Brief, Go To

As you know, the National Labor Relations Board last year reversed the decades-old standard governing how collective bargaining units are determined. Under the previous standard, after a union petitioned for a group of employees to represent as an “appropriate” bargaining unit, the employer could challenge that unit asking that additional employees with “community of interest” be included in the proposed unit. Under Specialty Healthcare, the union’s requested collective bargaining unit will be deemed to be appropriate even if a larger group of workers would be just as appropriate or even more appropriate.

The Board’s decision in Specialty has opened permitted unions to create “micro-bargaining units” – units of just a few employees in a larger workforce of employees doing the same or similar jobs. Although the Board originally suggested that the Specialty standard would only be applied to the healthcare industry, they have since applied that micro-unit standard to Northrop Grumman, a beverage bottling company, an airport rental car agency, and others. They most recently applied the Specialty standard to Bergdorf Goodman in New York, approving a micro-unit consisting of just the sales personnel in the women’s shoes department.

NAW, the Coalition for a Democrat Workplace (CDW), and others have filed amicus briefs and motions to intervene in several court cases challenging the Board’s Specialty standard. Last week NAW joined as a party in an amicus brief challenging the Specialty standard in the Bergdorf Goodman case.

To read our amicus brief, go to:

http://myprivateballot.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/CDW-et-al.-Amicus-Brief.pdf

We will keep you updated as all of our court actions proceed.

http://www.naw.org/govrelations/advisory.php?articleid=669