WASHINGTON—The National Labor Relations Board has ruled against TruStone Financial Credit Union in a dispute over the CU’s decision to close two branch offices that were staffed by unionized employees, and then to reopen branches nearby with non-union employees.
In an April 13 ruling, NLRB Administrative Law Judge Christine E. Dibble said Minneapolis, Minn.-based TruStone had used a “faulty semantic construct” in arguing that the two reopened branches were “new.”
The credit union’s employees are represented by Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 12, which filed an unfair labor practices charge with the NLRB.
According to Workday Minnesota, TruStone notified OPEIU Local 12 in 2015 that the credit union would close its Golden Valley, Minn., and Apple Valley, Minn., locations and open two new branch offices nearby. TruStone said the Golden Valley and Apple Valley union employees could apply to transfer to another bargaining unit location or apply for a job at the “new” facilities, which the credit union declared would be non-union, Workday Minnesota reported.
In its decision the NLRB, however, ruled that “an employer must apply an existing collective-bargaining agreement to a relocated facility if the operations at the new facility are substantially the same as those at the old facility…”
Judge Dibble called TruStone’s claim that the relocated branch offices were “new” facilities was a “faulty semantic construct.”
According to Workday Minnesota, Dibble has ordered TruStone to:
- Apply its collective bargaining agreement with OPEIU Local 12 to the two relocated branch offices.
- Offer four employees “who were unlawfully denied transfers to those facilities immediate transfers to those facilities, if they so choose.”
- Make “affected employees [at the relocated facilities] whole for any losses of earnings or benefits they may have suffered because of the failure to apply the bargaining agreement to them…”
The NLRB judge also ordered TruStone to post at all its facilities a notice announcing that “the National Labor Relations Board has found we violated Federal labor law…,” according to Workday Minnesota, which further reported that the judge’s order specified that the required notice spell out nine actions TruStone would no longer pursue, including “WE WILL NOT modify the existing bargaining unit in our collective-bargaining agreement with OPEIU, Local 12 (the Union), without the consent of the Union.”
Workday Minnesota said that the remedies ordered by the NLRB administrative judge could be long in coming, however, because labor law allows TruStone up until May 11, 2016 to file an appeal for review by the full NLRB, “which could take many, many more months to resolve.”