Court orders plumbing company back to bargaining after dropping its union

In June 2021, the company’s plumbers voted to unionize. Six months later, the union filed charges with the labor board, accusing the company of a run of unfair labor practices. Among them: posting a petition to decertify the union on the staff bulletin board, emailing employees to encourage them to sign it, and refusing to meet for bargaining.

To settle those charges, the company signed an agreement in April 2022. It promised to “meet at reasonable times and intervals and bargain in good faith with the Union.” The deal came with a sting. If the company broke it and failed to fix the breach within 14 days, the board could file a fresh complaint, and the company agreed in advance that every allegation in that complaint would be “deemed admitted.” By signing, in other words, it gave away most of its room to argue later.

That is close to what unfolded. In March 2023, after a single bargaining session, the company canceled the next one and told the union it was withdrawing recognition, dropping it as the workers’ representative. It pointed to “documentary evidence” that the union had lost majority support. When a board attorney warned it was in breach, the reply from the company’s side was blunt: “Take whatever action you believe is appropriate.”

The board did. It moved for default judgment, a ruling issued without a full hearing when one side hasn’t put up a real defense. And the company’s defense was thin. It denied relying on the very decertification documents it had named in its own withdrawal notice, then insisted, without explaining why, that the withdrawal was “lawful.”

The board wasn’t persuaded, and neither was the court. An employer can’t simply cut a union loose, the judges explained. It needs objective proof that the union has actually lost majority support, such as a signed petition or letter. The documents the company leaned on didn’t hold up. Some were dated before the union’s certification period closed on January 24, 2023 – a window in which the union’s majority support is presumed – so they couldn’t count. The rest came afterward, at a point when, as the board saw it, the company’s own labor troubles could have turned workers against the union.