Opinion ID: 2163453
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: NLRB Power to Prevent Unfair Labor Practice: Statutory and Policy Tensions

Text: Section 7 of the NLRA, 29 USC 157, guarantees workers the right to organize and engage in collective bargaining without interference. Those specific practices proscribed as interfering with a worker's § 7 rights have been deemed unfair labor practice[s] and are codified in § 8 of the NLRA, 29 USC 158. Through § 10 of the act, 29 USC 160, Congress has engineered a mechanism for NLRB review and enforcement of § 8 charges, and authorizes the NLRB (a) to prevent any person from engaging in any unfair labor practice (listed in § 8 of this title) affecting commerce. This power shall not be affected by any other means of adjustment or prevention that has been or may be established by agreement, law or otherwise   . (Emphasis supplied.) In determining the propriety of discretionary NLRB deference to the litigants' contractually-forged binding arbitral process, both the Federal judiciary and the NLRB have been confronted with the apparent tension between two competing congressional policies: one policy discourages while the other supports the exercise of deferral authority. The first policy favors NLRB remedial independence and casts the board as the sole arbiter of statutory unfair labor practices. [16] This congressional policy, reflecting the literal mandate of NLRA, § 10(a) quoted above, necessarily operates to the exclusion of arbitral deferral. The second policy encourages affording full play to the voluntary, contractual resolution of grievance disputes [17] and elevates the arbitral mechanism for grievance adjustment to a preferred position in Federal labor law. [18] This policy preference embraces the concept of discretionary deferral authority despite the literal mandate of NLRA, § 10(a) [19] and finds support in § 203(d) of the Labor Management Relations Act (hereinafter LMRA), 29 USC 173(d), which provides that, Final adjustment by a method agreed upon by the parties is declared to be the desirable method for settlement of grievance disputes arising over the application or interpretation of an existing collective bargaining agreement. [20] As will be revealed below, this conflict has largely been resolved in favor of discretionary deferral authority in both post -award, or Spielberg Mfg Co, 112 NLRB 1080; 36 LRRM 1152 (1955), and pre -arbitral, or Collyer Insulated Wire, 192 NLRB 837; 77 LRRM 1931 (1971), deferral situations. Rather than taking either of these two policy extremes, however, Federal authorities have embraced the tertium quid and upheld the arbitral deferral doctrine provided the NLRB retains statutory jurisdiction to review the ultimate arbitral award. No lesser authority than the United States Supreme Court has indicated in dictum its approval of the deferral doctrine when Mr. Justice Brennan remarked for a unanimous Court in William E Arnold Co v Carpenters Dist Council of Jacksonville, 417 US 12, 16-17; 94 S Ct 2069; 40 L Ed 2d 620 (1974), as follows: Indeed, Board policy is to refrain from exercising jurisdiction in respect of disputed conduct arguably both an unfair labor practice and a contract violation when, as in this case, the parties have voluntarily established by contract a binding settlement procedure.    The Board said in Collyer, `an industrial relations dispute may involve conduct which, at least arguably, may contravene both the collective agreement and our statute.    We believe it to be consistent with the fundamental objectives of Federal law to require the parties    to honor their contractual obligations rather than, by casting [their] dispute in statutory terms, to ignore their agreed-upon procedures.'    The Board's position harmonizes with Congress' articulated concern that, `[f]inal adjustment by a method agreed upon by the parties is    the desirable method for settlement of grievance disputes arising over the application or interpretation of an existing collective-bargaining agreement   .' 29 USC 173(d). [21]