Micro Units, the Next Obama-Era Rule to Die

In PCC Structurals, Inc., the Board reinstated the traditional community of interest standard to be used when determining whether unions have included all necessary employees on a petition for union representation. The Board’s reversal is a welcomed relief to employers who have been forced to bargain with several small units of employees in one workplace, thereby preventing all employees at a worksite from exercising their rights to vote on union representation.

In Specialty Healthcare, the Board did away with over 20 years of established precedent by changing the test used in determining whether a petitioned-for unit of employees to vote for union representation was the most appropriate unit within the employer’s workforce. Unions typically craft the petition to contain the smallest possible group to vote that has already showed their support for representation, while employers typically wish to expand the unit of voting employees to get a more accurate representation of what all employees in the workplace want in terms of union representation.

In PCC Structurals, the Board reinstated the traditional community of interest analysis to determine whether employees in the petitioned-for unit share a community of interest with excluded employees. There, the IAM sought to unionize a micro-unit of approximately 100 welding employees despite belonging to a larger group of over 2,000 production workers. The welding employees worked closely with other production workers and shared several terms and conditions of employment, such as similar schedules, shared supervisors, constant contact, same benefits, same training, and wearing the same protective equipment while working throughout the manufacturing process.

In applying the Specialty Healthcare analysis, the Regional Director determined that the excluded production workers did not share an “overwhelming community of interest” with the micro-unit of welding employees.

Under PCC Structurals, the Board unequivocally reinstated the more simplified and practical analysis used for decades before Specialty Healthcare, examining factors like:

• Whether the exclude employees and petitioned for unit of employees are organized into a separate department;
• Have distinct skills and training;
• Have distinct job functions and perform distinct work, including inquiry into the amount and type of job overlap between job classifications;
• Are functionally integrated with Employer’s other employees;
• Have frequent contact and interchange with other employees;
• Have distinct terms and conditions of employment;
• And are separately supervised.

Matt Austin owns Austin Legal, LLC, a boutique law firm based in Ohio that limits its representation to employers dealing with labor, employment, and OSHA matters. You can reach Matt by calling him at (614) 843-3041 or emailing him at Matt@MattAustinLaborLaw.com.