NTN BOWER CORPORATION

National Labor Relations Board - Unpublished Board Decisions

Mar 26, 2013

10-RD-090682 (N.L.R.B. Mar. 26, 2013)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BEFORE THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
NTN-BOWER CORPORATION
Employer
and Case 10-RD-090682
GINGER ESTES
Petitioner
and
INTERNATIONAL UNION, UNITED
AUTOMOTIVE AEROSPACE AND
AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENT
WORKERS OF AMERICA (UAW),
AFL-CIO
Union
ORDER
The Employer’s Request for Review of the Regional Director’s administrative dismissal
of the instant petition raises no substantial issues warranting reversal of the Regional Director’s
action. Accordingly, dismissal of the petition is affirmed.1

1 The May 15, 2012 Mediated Settlement Agreement entered into by the Employer, the
Union, and the Acting General Counsel, and later approved by the United States Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, requires the Employer, among other things, to
“recognize the Union as the exclusive collective-bargaining representative of the bargaining unit
employees at its Hamilton, Alabama plant . . . .” Because that requirement subsumes a duty to
bargain with the Union as the unit employees’ representative, the relevant inquiry here is
whether a reasonable period of time for post-settlement bargaining had elapsed when the instant
decertification petition was filed. See, e.g., Freedom WLNE-TV, Inc., 295 NLRB 634, 634
(1989); Poole Foundry & Machine Co., 95 NLRB 34, 35-37 (1951), enfd. 192 F.2d 740 (4th Cir.
1951), cert. denied 342 U.S. 954 (1952); see also Mediated Settlement Agreement, ¶ 11 &
Exhibit C (requiring notice to be posted by the Employer, as “modified . . . to be consistent with
[the] agreement” and incorporated into the agreement, stating that the Employer will “recognize
and, on request, bargain with the Union”). Under the circumstances, we find that it had not.
Prior to the settlement agreement, there was a 17-month period during which the
Employer refused to recognize the Union. The settlement agreement reestablished this fractured
relationship and required the Employer to recognize and bargain with the Union. It also required
the Employer to abide by the terms of the parties’ collective-bargaining agreement, then to
expire in about 7 months. About 3 months before the contract expired, the Union requested
bargaining for a successor agreement and requested information in connection with the
bargaining request. The day before the Union’s bargaining and information request, the instant
2
MARK GASTON PEARCE, CHAIRMAN
RICHARD F. GRIFFIN, JR., MEMBER
SHARON BLOCK, MEMBER
Dated, Washington, D.C., March 26, 2013.

decertification petition was filed. In these circumstances, we agree with the Regional Director
that a reasonable period for bargaining had not elapsed before the filing of the petition and that
dismissal of the petition was therefore appropriate.
In addition, we note that at the time the decertification petition was filed, the process to
which the Employer had agreed in the settlement agreement to make employees financially
whole for the losses they suffered remained incomplete and the agreement had not yet been
given full effect.