The National Labor Relations Board which, until Chairman Wilma Liebman’s departure on Aug. 27, 2011, included Chairman Liebman (D) and members Mark Gaston Pearce (D), Craig Becker (D) and Brian Hayes (R), is the source of several very significant recent rulings for employers and unions. On Aug. 26, 2011, the final working day of Ms. Liebman’s nearly 14-year term, the board sided with unions in three important 3-1 decisions involving rules for organizing and representing workers—Lamons Gasket Company, 357 NLRB No. 72 (Aug. 26, 2011), UGL-UNICCO Service Company, 357 NLRB No. 76 (Aug. 26, 2011), and Specialty Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center of Mobile, 357 NLRB No. 83 (Aug. 26, 2011)—each of which overturns prior board precedent. This month’s column discusses each of these three controversial rulings.

Recognition Bar

Lamons Gasket Company focuses on the new bargaining relationship created by an employer’s voluntary recognition of a union based on a showing of support by a majority of employees (typically through a card check procedure). For over 40 years, federal law had barred challenges to a union’s representative status for a “reasonable period” following voluntary recognition, in order to give the new bargaining relationship a chance to succeed. In its 2007 decision in Dana Corp., 351 NLRB 434 (2007), the Bush board modified that long-standing “recognition bar” doctrine by establishing a 45-day period following an employer’s voluntary recognition of a union during which employees were permitted to petition the board for a secret ballot election to test the union’s majority status.