Opinion ID: 779609
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Bargaining Behavior At the Table

Text: 21 This case does not present the question of whether a company's steadfast insistence on initial proposals that, if accepted, would have resulted in the employees receiving lower pay and fewer benefits than they received before the union's arrival might be sufficient evidence of bad-faith bargaining to support a § 8(a)(5) violation. It is well established that under the National Labor Relations Act an employer is under a duty to enter into sincere, good faith negotiations with the constituted representative of the employees, with an intent to settle the differences and arrive at an agreement. NLRB v. Wonder State Mfg. Co., 344 F.2d 210, 215 (8th Cir.1965). The Act, however, does not impose any duty to actually reach an agreement and does not prevent a party from insisting in good faith on any particular bargaining position. In the instant case, the Board found that Hardesty's bargaining behavior was not above board. The record shows that the parties easily reached agreement on a number of issues and that the negotiations proceeded smoothly for several months until Hardesty withdrew some of its initial proposals (e.g., vacation) and thereafter introduced regressive proposals on other issues, proposing the elimination of overtime (which averaged ten hours per week, per employee in the unit), bonuses, and the 401(k) plan. Of itself, such hard-bargaining might not amount to an § 8(a)(5) violation, especially if the Company provided compelling explanations for its proposals. However, in this case, the Board found that the explanation for Hardesty's bargaining positions were not to be found in the Company's somewhat perfunctory statements. Rather, the explanation for the Company's course of conduct was provided by the Company's away-from-the-table behavior, consisting mostly of statements by supervisors concerning the Company's preferred method of dealing with the Union. Given the evidence of record, we cannot say that the Board erred in concluding that Hardesty had no intention of reaching an agreement, that its plan was to wait until a decertification vote might be had in order to get rid of the Union, and that its bargaining behavior was part-and-parcel of this plan.