Opinion ID: 539169
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: negotiation and consummation of the memorandum of understanding

Text: 21 Because we accept the NLRB's determination that ITOs are independent contractors, we enforce its related decision that the union security and referral provisions of the April 1980 Memorandum of Understanding and the Union's efforts to obtain those provisions were unlawful secondary activities. We recognize that the Union undertook these activities in view of the Division of Advice's November 1979 pronouncement that ITOs were employees. The Union does not press an argument that this pronouncement formally estops the Board from giving retroactive effect to its determination. The Union does, however, urge that it should be protected because it reasonably believed, based on the November 1979 advice, that ITOs were employees. But the Division is not a rule dispensing authority and protective shields for unions or employers are not in its arsenal. The Union here thus acted at its peril. 6 22 Conduct is primary and lawful if a union is addressing the labor relations of the contracting employer vis-a-vis his own employees, but activity is secondary and unlawful if it is tactically calculated to satisfy union objectives elsewhere. National Woodwork Mfrs. Ass'n v. NLRB, 386 U.S. 612, 644-45, 87 S.Ct. 1250, 1268-69, 18 L.Ed.2d 357 (1967). The ALJ held that the union security and referral provisions of the April 1980 Memorandum, as well as the efforts to obtain those provisions, were secondary because the provisions treated independent contractors as employees and attempted to secure work for unionized ITOs in preference to non-union ITOs. 7 We cannot gainsay that disposition.. See, e.g., Shepard, 669 F.2d at 765. Because ITOs are not employees, the Union's objective was impermissible under National Woodwork--regardless of whether the Union in fact believed that the ITOs were employees. 23