A Busy Year at the National Labor Relations Board:  NLRB General Counsel Provides Charge, Petition, and Litigation Statistics for FY2014

At the March 4, 2015 session of the American Bar Association’s mid-winter meeting of the Committee on Development of the Law under the NLRA, National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Richard Griffin disclosed detailed statistics regarding his office’s handling of unfair labor practice charge, representation case, and litigation matters during the Board’s 2014 fiscal year:

Unfair Labor Practice Charge Activity

• • 20,514 charges filed
  • 35.2% merit factor (64.8% of charges filed were dismissed or withdrawn)
  • Of those charges determined to have merit, 93.4% were settled (about the same as 2013’s settlement rate of 93.2%)
  • 1,216 complaints issued
  • 85% litigation success rate for the General Counsel before NLRB Administrative Law Judges

Representation Case Activity

• • 2,677 petitions filed  (slightly up from 2013)
  • 1,687 elections conducted (first-time and rerun)

Litigation Activity

• • NLRB regions submitted 144 requests to the General Counsel for Section 10(j) injunction authorization
  • General Counsel submitted 38 of these 144 requests to the NLRB for approval
  • Approval granted by the NLRB in 37 of the 38 requests
  • 11 Section 10(j) cases litigated – 9 complete wins for the General Counsel; 2 partial wins
  • 5 pending Section 10(j) injunction cases at the end of FY2014 – since the end of the fiscal year, these were resolved with 3 wins for the GC, 1 loss, and 1 settlement
  • Noel Canning cases:  since the case was decided by the Supreme Court in June 2014, 103 cases were returned to the Board from the courts of appeals for reconsideration and issuance of a new decision.  The Board has re-decided 70 of these cases, and 4 were settled, leaving 29 cases still to be decided.

A busy year, indeed, and 2015 looks like it will be more of the same, if not even busier, with the new election rules slated to go into effect in April, a number of high profile decisions to be issued (such as Browning-Ferris Industries), and important cases going to hearing (i.e., the complaints brought against McDonald’s and certain of its franchisees).