WP&S Victorious in NLRB Case!

Recently, the Teamsters Union filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (Peoria Region) seeking to represent all tank washers working at one of our trucking client's tank wash facilities. Wessels Pautsch & Sherman attorneys successfully persuaded the NLRB to dismiss the petition and no election was held!

In a pre-election hearing, WP&S argued on behalf or our client that the petitioned-for unit was not an appropriate unit because it was a contracting unit and the purposes of the act would not be served to hold an election when the unit would be contracted down to zero employees. The NLRB's and Union's position was that contracting the unit down to zero employees was not an imminent change; thus, it was an appropriate unit and an election should be held.

The Union's position throughout the hearing was that the plan to subcontract both tank washing facilities to a temporary agency was not actually going to happen, or at least not for quite some time. WP&S overcame the Union's inference that the change was really a plan to circumvent the Union because we were able to show that that the change was indeed imminent. And while no action had been taken for two months prior to the filing of the representation petition, the wheels were in motion for a change that was scheduled to be completed shortly after the date an election would have been held. Wessels Pautsch & Sherman demonstrated that the case law supported our position that a change scheduled to take place over the course of four months was considered an imminent change. The NLRB issued a decision in our favor and dismissed the petition.

For questions or more information about this case, please contact Attorney
Christina Lopez-Nutzman at chlopez@chgo.w-p.com or (312) 629-9300.