The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has declared the standard on union recognition, put forth by the National Labor Relation Board’s 2023 decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC, invalid, according to a March 6 court opinion.
In Cemex, the board held that when a union requests recognition from an employer because the majority of its workers see the union as their representative, the company needs to recognize the union and bargain with them or proceed with an election.
Brown-Forman Corp. v. NLRB is one of the first cases brought under the Cemex standard.
Previously, in the Brown-Forman case, employees sought better wages to match the alleged increased demand for whiskey production, per the lawsuit. To do so, they reached out to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to inquire about forming a union.
Finding the initial subsequent $1 bump in pay and management’s refusal to consider a higher wage increase unsatisfactory, employees continued to engage in labor organizing to a degree that shocked management, according to court documents.
Brown-Forman then offered improvements in its total rewards package, but, when the desire for unionizing wasn’t quashed, management ultimately called for employee meetings where management offered anti-union talking points. A week before the election, leadership also gifted workers bourbon. Ultimately, the unionizing effort failed.
An administrative law judge said that Brown-Forman meddled in employees’ efforts to unionize, determining that the distilling company engaged in unfair labor practices. That judge recommended a bargaining order under the standards of Cemex.
However, the 6th Circuit said that issuing a bargaining order after an election fails should be a last resort, per the precedent that had been in place for 50 years prior to Cemex, and also did not agree that the precedent shift was appropriately done.
“[T]he Board announced this significant policy change via an adjudication, and it did so without respecting the bounds of its adjudicatory authority,” the 6th Circuit said, noting that the standard had not been created “in furtherance of resolving the parties’ dispute.”
HR Dive reached out to the NLRB and Brown-Forman for comment, and did not hear back by the time of publication.