Holy Bologna! NLRB Finds Against Boar’s Head in Union Deterrence Case

The National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) upheld an administrative judge's ruling that Boar’s Head Provisions Co. Inc. (“Boar’s Head”) violated the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) when the meat supplier promised workers benefits if they decided not to unionize.

A three-member panel of the NLRB ruled on Thursday that the administrative law judge properly ruled that Boar's Head violated the NLRA by promising and following through on enhanced benefits for workers in exchange for voting against the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union (“UFCW”) as their bargaining representative. The panel rejected Boar's Head’s arguments challenging the judge's credibility determinations and other statements about certain testimony, finding that “[t]he board's established policy is not to overrule an administrative law judge's credibility resolutions unless the clear preponderance of all the relevant evidence convinces us that they are incorrect." The NLRB continued on to say that "[w]e have carefully examined the record and find no basis for reversing the findings."

The NLRB found that the administrative law judge also properly determined that Board’s Head violated the NLRA when one of its managers told workers that bargaining negotiations would start from "zero to minimum" if they voted for the union. The NLRB also backed the administrative law judge's ruling that Boar’s Head illegally surveilled the workers' hand-billing when they were organizing in 2017.

By way of background, maintenance workers at the Boar's Head plant in Holland, Michigan, began an organizing campaign in 2017, due in part to issues with having to purchase their own tools for work. Boar’s Head responded quite aggressively to the union organizing campaign, attempting to inform workers about how unionization would adversely affect them. As the union campaign heated up, Boar’s Head managers began making coercive statements to workers that the company would have to go from "zero to the minimum" in negotiations if the workers voted to unionize.

This, according to the administrative law judge, was a violation of the NLRA. As the administrative law judge wrote, "[r]espondent's references to bargaining from zero to the minimum and similar statements went beyond descriptions of the normal give and take of collective bargaining and are more reasonably construed as a result of selection versus a possible outcome of good-faith bargaining.” The NLRB upheld this finding.

The NLRB also upheld the administrative law judge’s finding that Boar’s Head’s anti-union strategy involved promising workers better benefits, including an improved vacation policy, if they voted against the union.

Congress enacted the NLRA in 1935 to protect the rights of employees and employers, to encourage collective bargaining, and to curtail certain private sector labor and management practices, which can harm the general welfare of workers, businesses and the U.S. economy.