Opinion ID: 720629
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Propriety of the Board's Bargaining Order

Text: 19 The Board ordered Quazite to bargain with the Union for a period of one year as a remedy for the Company's unlawful withdrawal of recognition. Quazite contends, first, that the Board's rationale for its remedy was inadequate and, second, that the bargaining order, by barring the Union's ouster for an entire year, deprived employees of their § 7 right to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing [or] ... to refrain from ... such activit[y]. 29 U.S.C. § 157. According to the Company, that right would not have been compromised if the Board had stuck to what the Company says is the Board's usual remedy in such cases, viz., an order directing the employer to resume bargaining in an environment free of unfair labor practices. 20 Whatever the merits of its argument, Quazite did not raise this objection below and cannot, therefore, properly raise it now. See 29 U.S.C. § 160(e) (No objection that has not been urged before the Board ... shall be considered by the court, unless the failure or neglect to urge such objection shall be excused because of extraordinary circumstances). Quazite argued generally before the Board that the Company did not violate the NLRA. Quazite did not make its fallback arguments that the Board did not adequately explain the need for a bargaining order in view of the minor nature of any unfair labor practice(s) that the Company might have committed, and that the Board's requirement that bargaining proceed for one year unnecessarily infringed upon the employees' § 7 rights. The Company advanced both of those arguments for the first time before this court but it has suggested no extraordinary circumstance to excuse its failure to preserve them. 21 Quazite's only rejoinder is that it excepted to the remedial order in its entirety. That exception is far too broad to preserve a particular issue for appeal. By objecting to the order in its entirety, Quazite was merely reasserting that it did not violate the Act and therefore, that no remedial order at all is necessary or proper. A categorical denial does not place the Board on notice that its particular choice of remedy is under attack, much less that its failure to explain that choice is also the subject of a challenge. See Local 900, Int'l Union of Elec., Radio and Mach. Workers v. NLRB, 727 F.2d 1184, 1191 (D.C.Cir.1984) (notice function ... ensures that the Board has the opportunity to resolve all issues properly within its jurisdiction). To hold otherwise would be to set the Board up for one ambush after another. 22 We therefore hold that Quazite waived any objection it might now raise to the suitability of the Board's remedy by not raising it before the Board. Consequently, we have no basis upon which to question whether the Board lawfully imposed the durational feature of the 12-month bargaining order.