NLRB reinstates rule that Employers must maintain dues check off provisions after contract expiration

In Hood River Distillers, 372 NLRB No. 126 (2023) the National Labor Relations Board retroactively applied a prior, more union-friendly standard for dues check off provisions.

In Valley Hospital Medical Center I (2019), the Board ruled that dues checkoff provisions in a collective bargaining agreement expire with an expiring collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”). That meant that once a CBA expired, employers were no longer required to continue to deduct union dues from employee paychecks and remit such union dues to the union. In Valley Hospital Medical Center II (2022), the Board reversed Valley Hospital Medical Center I, returning to the rule outlined in Lincoln Lutheran of Racine (2015), which prohibits an employer from unilaterally ceasing dues checkoff after the expiration of a CBA—because of the general statutory rule requiring employers to maintain most terms and conditions of employment after contract expiration to facilitate bargaining for a new agreement.

Notably, the Board determined that this reinstated standard applies retroactively in all pending cases.  The Board in Hood River Distillers retroactively applied this standard to the Oregon distillery, finding that the employer was obligated to continue honoring the dues checkoff arrangement until the parties reach either a successor CBA or a legitimate overall impasse in bargaining.

This reversal is a meaningful win for unions. The reinstated standard reduces the power an employer might gain by stretching out or delaying negotiations while the union is not receiving dues per the dues check off process, and the retroactive application of this rule to all pending cases means that employers currently refusing to remit dues after CBA expiration are now in violation of the National Labors Relation Act. 

For more information on this decision, please contact your labor law counsel.