Ion Construction v. District Council of Painters No. 16

ORDER

The general rule in labor-management relations is that a union and an employer may not enter into an agreement until a majority of the employees in a unit have selected the union as their exclusive bargaining agent. Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA” or the “Act”), 29 U.S.C. § 157 , grants employees the right to choose their representative for the purposes of collective bargaining. Section 9(a) of the Act provides that the bargaining representative for the employees in a unit must be the representative “designated or selected for the purposes of collective bargaining by the majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for such purposes.” 29 U.S.C. § 159 (a).

Based on the guarantees contained in sections 7 and 9(a), “[t]he [Supreme] Court has held that both the union and the employer commit unfair labor practices when they sign a collective bargaining agreement recognizing the union as the exclusive bargaining agent when in fact only a minority of the employees have authorized the union to represent their interests.” NLRB v. Iron Workers (“Higdon”), 434 U.S. 335, 344 , 98 S.Ct. 651, 657 , 54 L.Ed.2d 586 (1978). Further, it is an unfair labor practice…