Opinion ID: 760360
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Supervisory Taint in the Election Process

Text: 32 FSA objected that the petition and election process were unlawfully tainted by the inclusion of statutory supervisors, J.A. at 44. The threshold question in a supervisory taint claim is, of course, whether the accused parties were in fact supervisors under the NLRA. See Westwood One Broadcasting Servs., Inc., 323 NLRB No. 175, 1997 WL 331860 (1997), enforced 159 F.3d 1352, 1998 WL 516986 (3d Cir.1998). This issue could have been litigated at FSA's behest during the representation stage of these proceedings. In fact, FSA initially challenged the presence of supervising teachers in the bargaining unit. See 29 U.S.C. § 152(3) (excluding from its definition of covered employee ... any individual employed as a supervisor). After a hearing on the matter, the Regional Director found that the supervising teachers were not statutory supervisors under the NLRA, but on appeal the Board amended the Regional Director's decision to permit the teachers to vote subject to challenge. See J.A. at 101 n.3 (Decision and Certification of Representative, October 17, 1997). At the pre-election conference, the Employer's representative explicitly withdrew the challenge to the eligibility of the supervising teachers. See id. 33 In issuing its Certificate of Representative, the Board denied FSA's post-election objection based on supervisory taint because it was in the nature of postelection challenges which the Board has held that it will not entertain. J.A. at 101. The Board has long refused to hear challenges to votes brought for the first time after an election, as well as objections that are merely reformulated challenges to votes. See, e.g., NLRB v. A.J. Tower Co., 329 U.S. 324, 332, 67 S.Ct. 324, 91 L.Ed. 322 (1946); Prior Aviation Serv., Inc., 220 N.L.R.B. 460, 461 n. 3, 1975 WL 5980 (1975) (listing cases). The difference between objections and challenges is that [o]bjections relate to the working of the election mechanism and to the process of counting the ballots accurately and fairly. Challenges, on the other hand, concern the eligibility of prospective voters. A.J. Tower Co., 329 U.S. at 334, 67 S.Ct. 324. The ban on post-election challenges is traditionally employed when one party files a post-election objection that directly challenges the eligibility of a voter that was not raised previously. See Prior Aviation Serv., Inc., supra, at 460 (ban on post-election challenges applied to objection that alleged employee was an ineligible voter by reason of his supervisory status). Otherwise, as the Supreme Court has observed, losing parties would be able to lodge attacks on elections ad infinitum, delay[ing] the finality and statutory effect of the election results. A.J. Tower Co., 329 U.S. at 332, 67 S.Ct. 324. 34 The Board in this case not unreasonably relied on the ban on post-election challenges to bar FSA's attempt to revisit the issue of the teachers' supervisory status after the election, since FSA had explicitly abandoned that same challenge before the election. But it is not clear that the ban will take it the whole way, because, as noted above, it has traditionally been limited to challenges to votes or the constituency of the bargaining unit. However, the Board does allude briefly to a collateral estoppel argument which we find more compelling, that is, that a party such as FSA here cannot specifically withdraw its challenge to certain voters as supervisors and later allege that they are indeed supervisors whose participation in the disputed election has tainted it. See J.A. at 101 n.3. 35 Thus, since FSA withdrew its challenge to the supervisory status of the teachers pre-election, it was subsequently estopped from litigating the issue post-election, and as the Board found in its Decision and Order in the instant section 8(a)(5) refusal-to-bargain proceeding, see J.A. at 135, cannot now reopen the record of the representation proceeding to attempt again to litigate this issue. Board rules bar reopening the record to litigate issues in related unfair labor practice proceedings that the Board could have reviewed in the representation proceeding. See 29 C.F.R. § 102.67(f). 9 And FSA fail[ed] to request review of whether a supervising teacher is a statutory supervisor prior to the election, thereby precluding it from relitigating, in any related subsequent unfair labor practice proceeding, any issue which was, or could have been, raised in the representation proceeding. Id. We have, it is true, previously held that a union is not barred under this rule from relitigating representation issues when it brings unfair labor practice charges under sections 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(3) 10 of the NLRA because such charges do not constitute a related subsequent unfair labor practice proceeding (emphasis added). See Thomas-Davis Med. Ctrs. v. NLRB, 157 F.3d 909, 913 (D.C.Cir.1998); Clark & Wilkins Indus., Inc. v. NLRB, 887 F.2d 308, 316 (D.C.Cir.1989). Similarly, an employer in a subsequent section 8(a)(1) or 8(a)(3) proceeding is not barred from raising a defense that was or could have been litigated in the representation proceeding. See Intermountain Rural Elec. Ass'n v. NLRB, 732 F.2d 754, 760-61 (10th Cir.1984) (permitting confidential employee defense). By contrast, a section 8(a)(5) case based on an employer's technical refusal to bargain in order to obtain review of the representation proceeding is necessarily a related subsequent unfair labor practice proceeding. See Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, AFL-CIO v. NLRB, 365 F.2d 898, 903 (D.C.Cir.1966) (a company's appeal to the court in a refusal to bargain proceeding must be based on the record made at the earlier representation hearing); see also NLRB v. Hydro Conduit Corp., 813 F.2d 1002, 1005 (9th Cir.1987); Intermountain Rural Elec., 732 F.2d at 760-61; Rock Hill Tel. Co. v. NLRB, 605 F.2d 139, 143 (4th Cir.1979); Heights Funeral Home, Inc. v. NLRB, 385 F.2d 879, 881-82 (5th Cir.1967). Accord Hyatt Hotels, Inc. v. International Union of Operating Engineers, 256 N.L.R.B. 1099, 1981 WL 20552 (1981) (in refusal to bargain proceeding, no relitigation of supervisory status of pro-union employee who was alleged by employer to have interfered with the election). Since the record shows that FSA waived its right to request review of the supervisory status of the supervising teachers during the representation proceeding, relitigation of the supervisory taint issue is precluded.