A National Labor Relations Board judge has dismissed parts of an extensive case brought by a Missouri union, after leaders successfully negotiated new contracts with the owners of three involved nursing homes.
The July 3 decision, however, left several claims in play and ultimately called for the Luxor Healthcare-owned facilities to reinstate and repay five terminated employees represented by SEIU Healthcare MO-KS.
The union had alleged Luxor made unilateral changes to working conditions and pay after it took over Hillside Rehabilitation and Healthcare, Beauvais Rehabilitation and Healthcare and Rancho Rehabilitation and Healthcare in October 2021. All three facilities are in or near St. Louis.
Luxor’s immediate changes undermined existing collective bargaining agreements that had been in place under the previous owner and were slated to run through January 2023, the union alleged. The judge found that Luxor had to “maintain the predecessor’s status quo of conditions of employment” until “good-faith” bargaining led to a new agreement or reached an impasse.
“A perfectly clear successor has an obligation to bargain with the union prior to setting initial terms and conditions of employment that differ from those under the predecessor’s agreement with the Union,” wrote Administrative Law Judge Christal J. Key. “While Respondents were not required to adopt a predecessors’ contracts, they were obligated to maintain the status quo with regard to wages and terms and conditions of employment.”
The case was heard Jan. 30 through Feb. 2, 2023, but while awaiting a decision, the union reached a new contract agreement with Luxor and the three involved facilities. In May, the SEIU filed a motion seeking the partial withdrawal of unfair labor practice charges.
The judge only partially agreed, believing that maintaining some of the charges was necessary to support other allegations about alleged discharges and layoffs. The union had agreed to make the request as part of its bargaining process. But according to court documents, Luxor agreed that if the court didn’t allow a withdrawal, it would still consider the new agreements valid.
Key allowed the union to withdraw some broad charges related to an initial job offer letter sent to all employees after Luxor’s takeover, which included a problematic confidentiality clause.
“Instructing employees [that] they were precluded from forwarding the email and that the information was confidential is especially troubling here where employees were represented by the Union and the letters prohibited employees from sharing the information with the Union,” Key wrote.
A call Thursday to Luxor Healthcare’s main office in New Jersey was not returned by deadline.
Union request saves provider from violations
If Key had not agreed to the withdrawal, she wrote that she would have found the nursing home owners in violation of labor board rules regarding the privacy clause, changes to overtime and pay policies and the revocation of holiday pay for Martin Luther King Day in 2022.
Wages and overtime, she noted specifically, are mandatory items for union negotiation.
Layoffs are also required to be negotiated, a reason that Key called for former housekeeper Doris Thompson to be reinstated. The judge also ordered Luxor to review its records for other employees who may have been laid off in the housekeeping and laundry departments, something Key said the company did not do when subpoenaed earlier in the case.
In addition, Key found that a new, just-cause disciplinary standard led to the termination of four other employees, two of whom she also were targeted because of protected union activities. That standard was not valid, Key wrote, because all of the affected employees had worked at their facilities for more than 90 days and would have been due progressive discipline before firing under their existing union contract.
Key ordered Luxor to pay the terminated and laid off employees back pay with interest, as well as offer them their positions back.
She also allowed for the withdrawal of an allegation related to decreased wages after finding that very few employees would have been affected; Luxor had previously remedied some discrepancies. The union had also won higher wages for all employees under the new agreements.
“I find the collective bargaining agreements secured by the Union to be a reasonable resolution of the withdrawn allegations,” she wrote, noting that charges the union wanted to walk back did not “trade away” remedies for those who’d lost their jobs. “There is no history of previous violations or breach of previous settlements. This portends a better relationship between the parties and supports approval of the partial withdrawal request.”
