Labor — retaliation

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Labor — retaliation

Where a pro-union employee was terminated after successfully being found not to be a supervisor, the evidence supported the NLRB’s finding that the termination was retaliation for union activity.

“Here, substantial evidence supported the Board’s conclusion that Rochelle Waste violated § 8(a)(3) and (4) by terminating Jarvis. No one disputes that Jarvis began engaging in protected activity five months before his termination and that Rochelle Waste was aware of his activity (since Gelderloos attended the hearings regarding Jarvis’s supervisory status). The ALJ noted that Gelderloos (bitterly) claimed to have been forced to hire a ‘supervisor’ once Jarvis ‘decided he wasn’t’ one, but that the record showed that no one in fact was hired; rather, the parent company’s compliance manager, Evan Buskohl, came to the landfill but did not appear on any payroll documents. Additionally, the ALJ found that had another pro-union employee, Matt Cater, chosen to take a position at the separate hauling company, Jarvis would not have been terminated (since, apparently, the 3-2 vote in favor of forming the bargaining unit would then have been a tie). The ALJ also noted the timing of Jarvis’s firing: Gelerloos admitted that he had never fired an employee in thirty-seven years, but terminated Jarvis eight days before the representation election. And evidence showed that once Jarvis left, Gelderloos had to be on site more often, and temporary workers were brought in, calling into question the articulated rationale of a workforce reduction.”

Enforcement Granted.

10-3213, 10-3701, 10-3872 & 11-1011 Rochelle Waste Disposal, LLC, v. NLRB

Petitions for Review and Cross-Applications for Enforcement of Orders of the National Labor Relations Board, Williams, J.