FedEx Freight v. NLRB, No. 15-1848 (8th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseFedEx petitioned for review of the Board's orders forcing it to bargain with the unions, arguing that the Specialty Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center of Mobile standard violates the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. 159(a); circuit law; and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 551 et seq. Determining that the court has jurisdiction to review FedEx's claims, the court concluded that the first step in the analysis described by Specialty Healthcare, in which the Board analyzes the union's proposed bargaining unit under the traditional community of interest test, is not a departure from the Board's precedent and is consistent with the requirements of section 9(b) of the NLRA; because the Specialty Healthcare framework does not make the extent of union organization "controlling," the court concluded that it does not violate section 9(c)(5); and the Board did not violate the APA by announcing the overwhelming community of interest standard in the course of adjudicating Specialty Healthcare rather than by notice and comment rulemaking. In this case, the court concluded that the Board's decisions to certify bargaining units consisting of the road and city drivers were supported by substantial evidence and were not arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion. Accordingly, the court denied FedEx's petitions for review and granted the Board's cross-petitions for enforcement.
Court Description: Murphy, Author, with Smith and Benton, Circuit Judges] Petition for Review - National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB did not err in applying the two step analysis from Specialty Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center of Mobile, 357 NLRB No. 83 (2011) in determining that the union's proposed bargaining unit of city and road drivers who work at FedEx's terminals was composed of a readily identifiable group of employees sharing a community of interest and that FedEx did not meet its burden to show that the dockworkers it proposed should be added to the unit shared an "overwhelming community of interest" with the drivers; the Specialty Healthcare framework is a reasonable interpretation of how the NLRB should apply section 9(b)of the National Labor Relations Act and decide on an appropriate unit and was entitled to deference; the "overwhelming community of interest" standard is not a material departure from past precedent and was consistent with section 9(b) of the Act; nor does the framework violate section 9(c)(5) of the Act or the Administrative Procedure Act.
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