By: John J. Toner, Esq.

In our posting last week regarding the NLRB’s proposed “Ambush Election” Rules and the DOL’s expected “Persuader Rules”  we posed several questions including: “Will [the NLRB] side-step the litigation by re-issuing the rules and/or move forward on its long term plan to get to the rest of the proposed election rules it did not issue?  Will the DOL ever issue the persuader rules?”

Within days of our posting the NLRB answered the first question, at least in part. On December 9 the NLRB agreed to voluntarily dismiss its appeal to the D.C. Circuit of the District Court’s finding that the rules were not issued by a proper quorum of Board Members. Inasmuch as NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce has publicly stated his intent to go forward with all of the original expedited election rules, it must be presumed that the NLRB sought the voluntary dismissal in order to side step the quorum issue and, at some point, will issue all the expedited election rules together.

A new question raised by the NLRB’s action is whether it was done so that the reissuance of the expedited election rules will be in sync with the DOL’s issuance of the “persuader”  rules that now are scheduled for issuance in March 2014.  If so, the management community will need to do a number of quick steps during the Spring and Summer of 2014.