Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/499/606
Timestamp: 2016-07-25 08:29:22
Document Index: 81653367

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 9', '§ 9', '§ 9', '§ 1', '§ 159', '§ 9', '§ 6', '§ 9']

AMERICAN HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION, Petitioner, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD et al. | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews AMERICAN HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION, Petitioner, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD et al.
499 U.S. 606 (111 S.Ct. 1539, 113 L.Ed.2d 675)
Argued: Feb. 25, 1991.
Decided: April 23, 1991.
[HTML] Syllabus The National Labor Relations Board has promulgated a rule providing that, with exceptions for, inter alia, cases presenting "extraordinary circumstances," eight, and only eight, defined employee units are appropriate for collective bargaining in acute care hospitals. Petitioner, American Hospital Association, brought this action challenging the rule's facial validity on the grounds that (1) § 9(b) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) requires the Board to make a separate bargaining unit determination "in each case" and therefore prohibits the Board from using general rules to define bargaining units; (2) the rule violates a congressional admonition to the Board to avoid the undue proliferation of bargaining units in the health care industry; and (3) the rule is arbitrary and capricious. The District Court agreed with petitioner's second argument and enjoined the rule's enforcement, but the Court of Appeals found no merit in any of the three arguments and reversed.
(b) The rule is not rendered invalid by the admonition, contained in congressional Reports accompanying the 1974 extension of NLRAcover age to all acute care hospitals, that the Board should give "due consideration . . . to preventing proliferation of bargaining units in the health care industry." The argument that the admonitionwhen coupled with Congress' 1973 rejection of a bill that would have placed a general limit of five on the number of hospital bargaining unitsevinces an intent to emphasize the importance of § 9(b)'s "in each case" requirement is no more persuasive than petitioner's reliance on § 9(b) itself. Moreover, even if this Court accepted petitioner's further suggestion that the admonition is an authoritative statement of what Congress intended by the 1974 legislation, the admonition must be read to express the desire that the Board consider the special problems that proliferation might create in acute care hospitals. An examination of the rulemaking record reveals that the Board gave extensive consideration to this very issue. In any event, the admonition is best understood as a congressional warning to the Board, and Congress is free to fashion a remedy for noncompliance if it believes that the Board has not given "due consideration" to the problem of proliferation in this industry. Pp. 614-617.
* Petitioner's first argument is a general challenge to the Board's rulemaking authority in connection with bargaining unit determinations based on the terms of the National Labor Relations Act, 49 Stat. 449, 29 U.S.C. 151 et seq., as originally enacted in 1935. In § 1 of the NLRA Congress made the legislative finding that the "inequality of bargaining power" between unorganized employees and corporate employers had adversely affected commerce and declared it to be the policy of the United States to mitigate or eliminate those adverse effects "by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection." 29 U.S.C. 151. The central purpose of the Act was to protect and facilitate employees' opportunity to organize unions to represent them in collective-bargaining negotiations.
Section 9(a) of the Act provides that the representative "designated or selected for the purposes of collective bargaining by the majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for such purposes" shall be the exclusive bargaining representative for all the employees in that unit. § 159(a). This section, read in light of the policy of the Act, implies that the initiative in selecting an appropriate unit resides with the employees. Moreover, the language suggests that employees may seek to organize "a unit" that is "appropriate"not necessarily the single most appropriate unit. See, e.g., Trustees of Masonic Hall and Asylum Fund v. NLRB, 699 F.2d 626, 634 (CA2 1983); State Farm Mutual Automobile Ins. Co. v. NLRB, 411 F.2d 356, 358 (CA7) (en banc), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 832, 90 S.Ct. 87, 24 L.Ed.2d 83 (1969); Friendly Ice Cream Corp. v. NLRB, 705 F.2d 570, 574 (CA1 1983); Local 627, Int'l Union of Operating Engineers v. NLRB, 194 U.S.App.D.C. 37, 41, 595 F.2d 844, 848 (1979); NLRB v. Western & Southern Life Ins. Co., 391 F.2d 119, 123 (CA3), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 978, 89 S.Ct. 445, 21 L.Ed.2d 439 (1968). Thus, one union might seek to represent all of the employees in a particular plant, those in a particular craft, or perhaps just a portion thereof.
Given the obvious potential for disagreement concerning the appropriateness of the unit selected by the union seeking recognition by the employerdisagreements that might involve rival unions claiming jurisdiction over contested segments of the work force as well as disagreements between management and labor§ 9(b) authorizes the Board to decide whether the designated unit is appropriate. See Hearings on S.1958 before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, p. 82 (1935) (hereinafter Hearings), 1 Legislative History of the National Labor Relations Act 1935, p. 1458 (hereinafter Legislative History) (testimony of Francis Biddle, Chairman of Board); H.R. Rep. No. 972, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., 20 (1935), 2 Legislative History 2976. Section 9(b) provides:
In resolving such a dispute, the Board's decision is presumably to be guided not simply by the basic policy of the Act but also by the rules that the Board develops to circumscribe and to guide its discretion either in the process of case-by-case adjudication or by the exercise of its rulemaking authority. The requirement that the Board exercise its discretion in every disputed case cannot fairly or logically be read to command the Board to exercise standardless discretion in each case. As a noted scholar on administrative law has observed: "The mandate to decide 'in each case' does not prevent the Board from supplanting the original discretionary chaos with some degree of order, and the principal instruments for regularizing the system of deciding 'in each case' are classifications, rules, principles, and precedents. Sensible men could not refuse to use such instruments and a sensible Congress would not expect them to." K. Davis, Administrative Law Text § 6.04, p. 145 (3d ed. 1972).
Consideration of petitioner's second argument requires a brief historical review of the application of federal labor law to acute care hospitals. Hospitals were "employers" under the terms of the NLRA as enacted in 1935, but in 1947 Congress excepted not-for-profit hospitals from the coverage of the Act. See 29 U.S.C. 152(2) (1970 ed.) (repealed, 1974). In 1960, the Board decided that proprietary hospitals should also be excepted, see Flatbush General Hospital, 126 N.L.R.B. 144, 145, but this position was reversed in 1967, see Butte Medical Properties, 168 N.L.R.B. 266, 268.
Petitioner does notand obviously could notcontend that this statement in the Committee Reports has the force of law, for the Constitution is quite explicit about the procedure that Congress must follow in legislating. Nor, in view of the fact that Congress refused to enact the Taft bill that would have placed a limit of five on the number of hospital bargaining units, does petitioner argue that eight units necessarily constitute proliferation. Rather, petitioner's primary argument is that the admonition, when coupled with the rejection of a general rule imposing a five-unit limit, evinces Congress' intent to emphasize the importance of the "in each case" requirement in § 9(b).
Petitioner also suggests that the admonition "is an authoritative statement of what Congress intended when it extended the Act's coverage to include nonproprietary hospitals." Brief for Petitioner 30. Even if we accepted this suggestion, we read the admonition as an expression by the Committees of their desire that the Board give "due consideration" to the special problems that "proliferation" might create in acute care hospitals. Examining the record of the Board's rulemaking proceeding, we find that it gave extensive consideration to this very issue. See App. 20, 78-84, 114, 122, 131, 140, 158-159, 191-194, 246-254.
We do not believe that the challenged rule is inconsistent with the Board's earlier comment on diversity in the health care industry. The comment related to the entire industry whereas the rule does not apply to many facilities, such as nursing homes, blood banks, and outpatient clinics. See St. Francis, 271 N.L.R.B., at 953, n. 39. Moreover, the Board's earlier discussion "anticipated that after records have been developed and a number of cases decided from these records, certain recurring factual patterns will emerge and illustrate which units are typically appropriate." See ibid.
Given the extensive notice and comment rulemaking conducted by the Board, its careful analysis of the comments that it received, and its well-reasoned justification for the new rule, we would not be troubled even if there were inconsistencies between the current rule and prior NLRB pronouncements. The statutory authorization "from time to time to make, amend, and rescind" rules and regulations expressly contemplates the possibility that the Board will reshape its policies on the basis of more information and experience in the administration of the Act. See 29 U.S.C. 156. The question whether the Board has changed its view about certain issues or certain industries does not undermine the validity of a rule that is based on substantial evidence and supported by a "reasoned analysis." See Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc., v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 42, 57, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 2866, 2874, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983).