Opinion ID: 187060
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The relay point change

Text: As recounted above, the Board held MCA ran afoul of McClatchy when it unilaterally imposed a provision reserving the right to change relay points. That decision was arbitrary and capricious for three reasons. First, the management rights provision at issue is utterly unlike the provision in McClatchy or the provision at issue in any subsequent case to which the Board has applied McClatchy. Second, it is inconceivable the provision will jeopardize collective bargaining in the affected unitthe stated concern underlying McClatchy. Finally, the Board's decision here would impinge upon the employer's ability to run its business more severely than did McClatchy itself or any of its sequellae. First. The Board's decision is inconsistent with both the plain terms and the reasoning of McClatchy, which was based upon and limited by the paramount importance of wages as a mandatory subject of bargaining. 321 N.L.R.B. at 1391 n. 22. We expressly predicated our approval of the Board's decision upon the distinction between wages and scheduling or a host of other decisions generally thought closely tied to management operations. 131 F.3d at 1035. Indeed, the Board has consistently limited its application of McClatchy to provisions giving an employer discretion to determine wages (or, in one case, benefits) rather than discretion to configure management operations until this case. The placement of a relay point is a quintessentially managerial decision; its location presumably will affect the efficiency of the Company's operations but it will have no material effect upon the Company's wage bill. If, as a result of changing a relay point, some drivers lose work, then other drivers gain as much work; meanwhile, the bumping provision that MCA implemented as part of its final offer prevents management from manipulating relay points to give significantly more hours to less senior drivers. The Board contends the placement of a relay point is nonetheless subject to the McClatchy doctrine because it will have a direct effect on wages. MCA, 347 N.L.R.B. No. 88, at 1 n. 2. The effect is no more significant, however, than the effect of any management decision about the scheduling of work or its allocation among plants or shifts. Cf. Clinton's Ditch Coop. Co., Inc. v. NLRB, 778 F.2d 132, 135, 140 (2d Cir.1985) (management's right to change drivers' assignments had only indirect, limited connection to . . . any . . . aspect of labor relations). In McClatchy IV we deferred to the Board's view that wages are such a fundamental subject of collective bargaining that they are uniquely expected to be set bilaterally in a collective bargaining relationship. 131 F.3d at 1035. The placement of a relay point, with its incidental effect upon wages, simply is not comparable. Second. Neither of the pragmatic reasons for the Board's holding in McClatchy. applies to this case: If an employer could unilaterally set wages, then the union (1) would be unable to bargain knowledgeably and (2) would appear impotent to its members because of its incapacity to act as the employees' representative in setting terms and conditions of employment. McClatchy III, 321 N.L.R.B. at 1391. As to the former, management's change in the location of a relay point did not preclude meaningful bargaining as to the procedures and criteria governing wages, id.; nor, because wage rates and other terms of employment were fixed in nondiscretionary provisions of the final offer, did the change require the Union to bargain against a discretionary cloud. McClatchy IV, 131 F.3d at 1032. As for threatening to render the Union impotent and collective bargaining pointless in the eyes of employees, as applied here the idea is fanciful. The change in the relay point at issue here, like each of the six changes MCA made during the two year term of the 2001 CBA, was made in response to an unexpected event. Having moved the relay point merely in order to keep trucks rolling during the strike, the Company then found it was more efficient to retain the new location. As the strikeinduced move illustrates, the events that prompt the Company to change a relay point are both sporadic and sufficiently unexpected that the parties could not realistically have addressed them in the CBA; accordingly, management's reservation of the right to respond to them posed no realistic threat to the process of collective bargaining. Were it otherwise, the Union would not have agreed to the management rights clause in the 2001 CBA. More significant, with the benefit of experience under that agreement, the Union tentatively agreed to the clause again in the 2003 bargaining for a new agreement; indeed, the bargaining history shows the Union was concerned not with eliminating management's right to move relay points but with adding a more robust bumping provision in order to protect more senior drivers from any significant loss of work when a relay point is changed. Third. The Board's decision impedes the employer's ability after impasse to implement its final offer to a far greater extent than had any prior decision. Bear in mind that in McClatchy itself the employer was prohibited only from implementing a system in which it would have determined wages on a purely discretionary basis; nothing in that decision bars an employer from implementing a final offer in which wages are determined according to fixed criteria. In this case, the ALJ correctly noted the management rights provision at issue left MCA with complete discretion to move relay points, MCA, 347 N.L.R.B. No. 88, at 7, but neither the ALJ nor the Union ever suggested there might be fixed criteria MCA could have offered and then implemented after impasse to govern the placement of relay points. Nor does that seem feasible for, as we have seen, relay points, unlike wages, are changed in response to infrequent and exogenous events. In other words, because no nondiscretionary provision appears possible, the Board's decision would effectively preclude MCA from ever changing a relay point after impasse. That would be both anomalous, considering that MCA was free unilaterally to impletnent provisions regarding more fundamental subjects of bargaining, see, e.g., E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 346 N.L.R.B. No. 55, at 11-12 (2006) (permitting unilateral imposition of nondiscretionary health care plan), enf'd, 489 F.3d 1310, 1320 (D.C.Cir.2007), and inconsistent with the narrow exception in McClatchy to the general rule allowing the employer to implement its final offer after impasse. The ALJ justified the application of McClatchy to this case as follows: Section 8(d) of the Act requires the parties to bargain over wages and hours. It would undermine this specific statutory mandate if an employer could relegate to itself the discretion to determine [relay points after impasse]. In addition, to allow an employer to do so unjustifiably affects the balance of power between labor and management and thereby undermines an important goal of the Act of encouraging the parties to reach a collective-bargaining agreement. This is so because . . . if an employer can relegate to itself this discretion a union's bargaining strength is diminished and the likelihood of reaching an agreement is decreased. 347 N.L.R.B. No. 88, at 7. The ALJ's analysis is in effect a broadside attack upon the implementationafter-impasse doctrine. His concern that an employer would undermine the statutory mandate to bargain by unilaterally implementing its final offer after impasse overlooks the very purpose of the doctrine, which is to break[] the impasse and therefore encourage[] future collective bargaining . . . by giving one party, the employer, economic leverage. McClatchy IV, 131 F.3d at 1032. His other point that unilateral implementation means the union could no longer seek concessions from the employer in return for its agreement, MCA, 347 N.L.R.B. No. 88, at 7 ignores the Supreme Court's teaching that it is not the Board's role to equalize[e] disparities of bargaining power between employer and union. Insurance Agents, 361 U.S. at 490, 80 S.Ct. 419. In affirming the ALJ, the Board rather limply stated only that here, as in McClatchy, the unilateral change had a direct effect on wages, MCA, 347 N.L.R.B. No. 88, at 1 n. 2, without any more particularized examination of the significance of that effect. The Board gave no reason to believe the relay point provision here at issue would impede collective bargaining. Therefore, we think it necessary to reiterate a point we made in McClatchy IV: The Board must proceed cautiously in applying the McClatchy doctrine, taking care to tether its applications to the pragmatic justification for that decision, namely, to facilitate the process of collective bargaining.