Kindred Nursing Centers East, LLC, fka Specialty Healthcare v. NLRB, et al.

Case Updates

The Sixth Circuit issued a decision denying the petition for review and enforcing the NLRB’s decision inSpecialty Healthcare.

NCLC urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to overturn a NLRB decision that overruled the NLRB’s 1991 decision in Park Manor, which established a specific standard for determining appropriate bargaining units for nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, and other facilities. The NLRB’s new Specialty Healthcare standard affords a union wide latitude to organize employees in virtually any bargaining unit of its choice, with little or no regard for whether collective bargaining in that unit will be effective and ultimately lead to industrial peace. The new standard facilitates union organizing by allowing a union to establish a foothold of representation among a small group of employees in a particular workplace.

NCLC’s amicus brief argued that although this may be a desirable strategic outcome for the union, it does not serve the Act’s primary policy objective: promoting industrial peace through effective collective bargaining. According to NCLC’s amicus brief, the Specialty Healthcare ruling violates the terms and the core purposes of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and in particular, Section 9(c)(5) of the NLRA. Moreover, the NLRB cannot rationalize its Specialty Healthcare standard as a modest effort to “clarify” existing law because the case dramatically changes the standard for bargaining unit determinations in all industries regulated under the Act, not just the non-acute health care industry.