NLRB Micro-Union Decision Causes Untold Harm to Retail
April 27 2015 - 8:13PM
Business Wire
NRF and RILA File Brief in Support of
Macy’s
The National Labor Relations Board’s decision to recognize a
micro-union of workers in just a single department at a Macy’s
store in Massachusetts rather than the entire store violates
longstanding precedents on union organizing, the National Retail
Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association said today
in a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the U.S. Court of
Appeals.
“The NLRB’s support for micro-unions will turn workplace
cohesion and efficiency on its head and will acutely harm the
retail industry,” NRF Senior Vice President for Government
Relations David French said. “The establishment of micro-unions
will erect unnecessary barriers between both employees and
opportunities and employees and their customers.”
The case before the court derives from the NLRB’s 2014 decision
to recognize workers in the cosmetics and fragrance department at a
Macy’s store in Saugus, Mass., as a bargaining unit, abandoning its
previous view that a unit needed to consist of employees from at
least an entire store. NRF and RILA point out that the new standard
would balkanize retail employees, hamper customer service and
impede both employee rights and retail operations. Macy’s has
appealed the ruling.
“The board’s decision in Macy’s to cast aside the board’s
longstanding whole-store unit presumption for the retail industry –
despite promising not to do so in its Specialty Healthcare decision
– ignores the realities of the retail workplace and causes untold
harm to the retail industry.
“The board’s new test encourages a single store’s workforce to
be dissected into small, fractured bargaining units – like the
Macy’s store here – which hamstrings retail operations and customer
service, multiplies administrative costs and limits opportunities
for employees who could be denied the chance for advancement or
additional work because of arbitrary union line-drawing,” the brief
said.
“Unions now face little impediment to organizing by
cherry-picking a small subset of employees with little regard for
whether those employees constitute a practical bargaining unit, and
with little regard as to whether the designated subset of employees
has organizational significance within the employers’
business.”
NRF and RILA believe the NLRB erred in its application of the
Specialty Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center of Mobile decision
to the Macy’s case. The associations argue that the decision
ignores longstanding labor precedent and the uniqueness of the
retail industry workforce and violates the National Labor Relations
Act.
NRF is the world’s largest retail trade association,
representing discount and department stores, home goods and
specialty stores, Main Street merchants, grocers, wholesalers,
chain restaurants and Internet retailers from the United States and
more than 45 countries. Retail is the nation’s largest private
sector employer, supporting one in four U.S. jobs – 42 million
working Americans. Contributing $2.6 trillion to annual GDP, retail
is a daily barometer for the nation’s economy. NRF’s This is Retail
campaign highlights the industry’s opportunities for life-long
careers, how retailers strengthen communities, and the critical
role that retail plays in driving innovation. nrf.com
PERMALINK
National Retail FederationStephen E. Schatz,
855-NRF-PRESSPRESS@NRF.com