OCTOBER TERM, 1997
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the district of columbia circuit
No. 96-795. Argued October 15, 1997—Decided January 26, 1998
Mack Trucks, Inc., sold its Allentown, Pennsylvania, branch to petitioner
Allentown Mack Sales & Service, Inc. Allentown thereafter operated as an independent dealership, employing 32 of the original 45 Mack employees. Although the Mack branch's service and parts employees had been represented by Local Lodge 724 of the machinists' union, a number of Mack employees suggested to the new owners, both before and immediately after the sale, that the union had lost their support or the support of bargaining-unit members generally. Allentown refused Local 724's request for recognition and for commencement of collective-bargaining negotiations, claiming a good-faith reasonable doubt as to the union's support; it later arranged an independent poll of the employees, who voted 19 to 13 against the union. The union then filed an unfair-labor-practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board. Under longstanding Board precedent, an employer who entertains a good-faith reasonable doubt whether a majority of its employees supports an incumbent union has three options: to request a formal, Board-supervised election, to withdraw recognition from the union and refuse to bargain, or to conduct an internal poll of employee support for the union. The Administrative Law Judge (AL J) held, inter alia, that because Allentown lacked an "objective reasonable doubt" about Local 724's majority status, the poll violated §§ 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(5) of the National Labor Relations Act. The Board agreed and ordered petitioner to recognize and bargain with the union. The Court of Appeals enforced the order.
Held: The Board's "good-faith reasonable doubt" test for employer polling is facially rational and consistent with the Act, but its factual finding that Allentown lacked such a doubt is not supported by substantial evidence on the record as a whole. Pp. 363-380.
(a) This Court rejects Allentown's contention that, because the "good-faith reasonable doubt" standard for polls is the same as the standard for unilateral withdrawal of recognition and for employer initiation of a Board-supervised election, the Board irrationally permits employers to poll only when it would be unnecessary and legally pointless to do so. While the Board's adoption of this unitary standard is in some respects puzzling, it is not so irrational as to be "arbitrary [or] capri-
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