Opinion ID: 795770
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: St. Vincent's Affirmative Defense

Text: 70  The pendency of a union representation election does not prevent management from carrying on its business in the normal fashion. NLRB v. Anchorage Times Pub. Co., 637 F.2d 1359, 1366 (9th Cir.1981). Thus, in a mixed-motive case under Wright Line, an employer may avoid a Section 8(a)(3) violation where it can establish that it would have taken the challenged action even in the absence of the protected activity. See Dash, 793 F.2d at 1066; see also Reno Hilton Resorts, 196 F.3d at 1284-85; Wright Line, 251 N.L.R.B. at 1089. 71 The Board concluded that St. Vincent established its affirmative defense under Wright Line. In sum, the Board concluded that St. Vincent established that it implemented its subcontracting decision within the 30-to-60 day timeframe it announced prior to the filing of the petition for a representation election. See St. Vincent Med. Ctr., 2003 WL 1785029, at  n. 4. The Board's simple footnote, however, offers little insight into this otherwise fact-intensive case. See NLRB v. Special Mine Servs., Inc., 11 F.3d 88, 89 (7th Cir.1993) (discussing the depressing pattern of Board decisions in which [t]here is one serious issue, which the Board tucks into a footnote). 72 The announcement to which the Board likely refers took place on December 27, 1999. That announcement, however, hardly reflects substantial evidence on the record as a whole that St. Vincent would have subcontracted out the RC department, when and as it did, in the absence of union activity. See Universal Camera Corp., 340 U.S. at 488, 71 S.Ct. 456; Wright Line, 251 NLRB at 1089. 73 While St. Vincent adhered to its intended timeline for subcontracting out the work of the RC department, we would need to ignore a powerful string of coincidences to conclude that St. Vincent would have implemented subcontracting, when and as it did, in the absence of union activity. First, despite experiencing management problems for more than a decade, St. Vincent first mentioned subcontracting the same month that the Union began its full-scale campaign to organize the technical staff. Second, though St. Vincent first discussed outsourcing in July 1999, it did not decide to investigate subcontractors until nine days after the Union circulated a flier at the hospital announcing its intent to seek a representation election. Third, St. Vincent subcontracted the department less than two weeks before the scheduled election, thereby disenfranchising one quarter of the eligible voters. 74 Moreover, as discussed above, the ALJ's findings regarding St. Vincent's purported business justification substantially detract from the Board's conclusion. St. Vincent's witnesses did not present a consistent or plausible explanation for why it was necessary to subcontract out the work of the entire RC department in order to obtain better managers. The ALJ found that St. Vincent's business justification seem[ed] to lack plausibility, and noted the seeming lack of a clear rationale for the way in which [the subcontracting decision] was carried out. He further found the justification was almost too much to believe and that [o]n its surface it appear[ed] to be a fabrication, and not a very good one at that. These findings reinforce the inference that the true motive for the subcontracting decision was anti-union animus. See Nevis Indus., Inc., 647 F.2d at 910; Shattuck Denn Mining Corp., 362 F.2d at 470. 75 In light of the record as a whole, we cannot conscientiously find that the evidence supporting [the Board's] decision is substantial, when viewed in the light that the record in its entirety furnishes. Universal Camera Corp., 340 U.S. at 488, 71 S.Ct. 456.