370
Opinion of the Court
able uncertainty on the part of the employer regarding that fact. On that issue, absent some reason for the employer to know that Bloch had no basis for his information, or that Bloch was lying, reason demands that the statement be given considerable weight.
Another employee who gave information concerning overall support for the union was Ron Mohr, who told Allentown managers that "if a vote was taken, the Union would lose" and that "it was his feeling that the employees did not want a union." Ibid. The ALJ again objected irrelevantly that "there is no evidence with respect to how he gained this knowledge." Id., at 1208. In addition, the Board held that Allentown "could not legitimately rely on [the statement] as a basis for doubting the Union's majority status," id., at 1200, because Mohr was "referring to Mack's existing employee complement, not to the individuals who were later hired by [Allentown]," ibid. This basis for disregarding Mohr's statements is wholly irrational.3 Local 724 had never won an election, or even an informal poll, within the actual unit of 32 Allentown employees. Its claim to represent them rested entirely on the Board's presumption that the work force of a successor company has the same disposition regarding the union as did the work force of the predecessor company, if the majority of the new work force came from the old one. See id., at 1197, n. 3; Fall River Dyeing, 482 U. S., at 43, 46-52. The Board cannot rationally adopt that presumption for purposes of imposing the duty to bargain, and adopt precisely the opposite presumption (i. e., contend that there is no relationship between the sentiments of the two work forces) for purposes of determining what evidence tends to establish a reasonable doubt regarding union support. Such
3 Justice Breyer points out that the ALJ did not disregard Mohr's statement entirely, but merely found that it was insufficient to establish a good-faith reasonable doubt. That observation is accurate but irrelevant. The Board discussed Mohr's statement in its own opinion, and the language quoted above makes it clear that the Board gave it no weight at all.
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