NLRB Overrules Specialty Healthcare and Eliminates Overwhelming Community of Interest Standard

By Mitzi Wyrick

In PCC Structurals, Inc., 365 NLRB No. 160, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) clarified the correct standard for determining whether a proposed bargaining unit constitutes an appropriate unit for bargaining when the employer contends that the smallest appropriate unit must include additional employees.  The NLRB overruled Specialty Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center of Mobile, 357 NLRB No. 934 (2011) (Specialty Healthcare) and reinstated the traditional community-of-interest standard for determining an appropriate bargaining unit in union representation cases.

Under Specialty Healthcare, if a union petitioned for an election among a particular group of employees, those employees shared a community of interest among themselves and the employer took the position that the smallest appropriate unit had to include employees excluded from the proposed unit, the NLRB would not

NLRB Reverts to Prior Standard for Implementing Unilateral Changes

By Mitzi Wyrick

In Raytheon Network Centric Systems, 365 NLRB No. 161, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) issued a ruling affecting bargaining obligations that are required before implementing a unilateral “change” in employment matters. Until 2016, when the NLRB decided E.I. du Pont de Nemours, 364 NLRB No. 113, the NLRB had found that an employer was not obligated to bargain before making unilateral changes when it followed a well-established past practice.

In the 2016 DuPont decision, the NLRB held that even if an employer acted consistently with past practice, if a collective bargaining agreement  (“CBA”) had expired and was no longer in effect, bargaining would always be required.  Specifically, the NLRB had required the employer to