Opinion ID: 613557
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Hacienda I and LJEB I

Text: In response to the Employers' unilateral cessation of dues-checkoffs, the Union filed unfair labor practice charges against the Employers. The Union alleged that the Employers' cessation of dues-checkoffs violated the unilateral change doctrine affirmed by the Supreme Court in Katz. Under that doctrine, an employer's unilateral change in conditions of employment under negotiation is ... a violation of § 8(a)(5) [of the NLRA], for it is a circumvention of the duty to negotiate which frustrates the objectives of § 8(a)(5) much as does flat refusal. Katz, 369 U.S. at 743, 82 S.Ct. 1107. General Counsel for the NLRB consolidated the charges and issued complaints against the Employers. An ALJ dismissed the complaints. Upon review of the ALJ's decision, the NLRB affirmed the dismissal in a 3-2 decision, [3] relying on the well-established precedent [of Bethlehem Steel and its progeny] that an employer's obligation to continue a dues-checkoff arrangement expires with the contract that created the obligation. Hacienda Hotel, Inc. Gaming Corp. ( Hacienda I ), 331 N.L.R.B. 665, 666 (2000). [4] The Board ruled that, although this line of precedent initially developed in the context of a contract containing both union security and dues checkoff, it has clearly come to stand for the general rule that an employer's dues-checkoff obligation terminates at contract expiration. Id. at 667. The Board ruled that the exception to the unilateral change doctrine first stated in Bethlehem Steel had been applied in a right-to-work context in Tampa Sheet Metal, 288 N.L.R.B. 322, and this extension of the exception to contracts not involving union security had been relied on in numerous Board decisions. Hacienda I, 331 N.L.R.B. at 668-69. The Union filed a petition for review of the Board's decision with this court, and we granted the petition, vacated the Board's ruling, and remanded for further proceedings. Local Joint Exec. Bd. of Las Vegas v. NLRB ( LJEB I ), 309 F.3d 578, 580 (9th Cir.2002). We explained that [w]e are unable to discern the Board's rationale for excluding dues-checkoff from the unilateral change doctrine in the absence of union security. Id. at 582. We rejected as inadequate the Board's conclusion that the rule of Bethlehem Steel, a case concerning dues-checkoff in the context of a union security agreement, was equally valid in right-to-work states merely because such a rule had been assumed without explanation in Tampa Sheet Metal and was subsequently repeated in several prior NLRB decisions. Id. We remanded the case so that the Board c[ould] either articulate a reasoned explanation for its rule or adopt a different rule with a reasoned explanation to support it. Id.