United Parcel Service, Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board

Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit·Decided August 30, 2024·No. 23-11076·Unpublished

Opinion

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

No. 23-11076

Non-Argument Calendar

UNITED PARCEL SERVICE, INC., Petitioner-Cross Respondent, versus NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD,

Respondent-Cross Petitioner.

Petitions for Review of a Decision of the National Labor Relations Board Agency No. 02-CA-275560

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Before ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, and BRANCH, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM:

United Parcel Service, Inc. (“UPS”), petitions for review of an order of the National Labor Relations Board (“Board”), which found that UPS committed unfair labor practices, in violation of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”), 29 U.S.C. § 151 et seq., by refusing requests for information submitted by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 804 (“Union”). The Union represents workers at UPS facilities in New York. UPS petitions for review, disputing the Union’s entitlement to the information and maintaining that it satisfied its good-faith duty to bargain. The Board cross-petitions for enforcement of its order. After careful review , we grant UPS’s petition in part, remanding for further proceedings as explained below, and we enforce the Board’s order in part.

I. Factual Background

During its “peak” season each year, running from October 15 to January 15, UPS hires about 10,000 seasonal package helpers at its facilities in Westchester, Long Island, and New York City (excluding Staten Island). The seasonal employees are members of the bargaining unit at those facilities, represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 804 (the Union).

A national master agreement and a local supplemental agreement comprise the relevant collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”) between the Union and UPS, effective August 2018 to July

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2023. Under the master agreement, UPS must supply the Union with a monthly list of new hires, including seasonal employees, “[i]n order to assist the Local Unions in maintaining current and accurate membership records.” The list provides each new hire’s name, address, and Social Security number, among other information , but not email addresses or phone numbers. UPS compiles this information in an Excel file and forwards it to the Union.

By the start of the 2020–21 peak season, following a lawsuit and grievances by seasonal employees, the Union suspected that UPS was not complying with CBA provisions governing seasonalemployee start times and wages. In particular, it believed that UPS was erroneously calculating wages for seasonal employees based on when they delivered their first package, instead of when they reported for and began their work.

On January 21, 2021, the Union requested that UPS provide the following information for all seasonal employees hired from October 15, 2020, through January 15, 2021: (1) the employees’ “phone numbers and/or email addresses”; and (2) “[a]ll documents reflecting report times for all seasonal employees, including but not limited to Daily Sign in sheet, security sign in sheets, and daily time sheets.” According to the Union’s letter, it needed this information to “complete its investigation and prepare for any subsequent hearing involving [UPS’s] violation of the CBA in regards to” these seasonal employees.

On February 3, 2021, UPS’s Director of Labor Relations, Warren Pandiscia, emailed the Union’s Director of Operations,

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Joshua Pomeranz, stating that UPS did not have daily sign-in sheets, security sign-in sheets, or daily timesheets that reflected seasonal employees’ reporting times, and that he was still “working on” the request for phone numbers and email addresses. In the weeks following this email, Pomeranz and Pandiscia discussed the request for contact information by phone, with Pandiscia emphasizing that the information was not systematically kept by UPS and would need to be manually extracted from individual job applications , which, in UPS’s view, was overly burdensome. Pomeranz maintained that UPS had an obligation to provide the information.

During March and April 2021, Pomeranz and Pandiscia exchanged multiple emails regarding the Union’s request for information . On March 9, Pomeranz sent a follow-up email to Pandiscia , asking whether UPS “intend[ed] to respond or provide the requested information.” The same day, Pandiscia replied that he believed he had responded. Pomeranz said that he had not received any response. On March 16, Pomeranz re-sent the Union’s January 21 information request. Pandiscia responded by asking what the request was in reference to, and whether it was associated with a grievance. Pomeranz replied that it “relat[ed] to the ongoing wage theft and separate agreements [UPS] makes with seasonal employees .” Then, on April 7, Pomeranz asked for “a time frame or a clear rejection,” and Pandiscia replied that he was working on the information request, among others, but did “not have direct access to the information” and could not identify a specific date when it would be provided. On April 12, Pandiscia wrote that the requests “were responded to.” Pomeranz replied the same day and denied

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receiving any response. UPS ultimately did not produce any documents responsive to the information requests.

II. Procedural History

On April 8, 2021, the Union filed an unfair labor practice charge against UPS. Following a hearing in early February 2022, an administrative law judge issued a decision finding that UPS violated § 8(a)(5) and (1) of the NLRA by failing to provide the requested information. The ALJ found that the contact and report- time information was relevant. And it rejected UPS’s various defenses , including that (1) the Union wanted the information for use in arbitrations, rather than a bargaining matter; (2) the requested report-time information did not exist; (3) the Union sought contact information beyond the scope of the information-sharing provisions of the CBA; and (4) the contact information was unduly burdensome to compile.

UPS sought review by the Board, which affirmed the ALJ’s decision. The Board affirmed the ALJ’s ruling on the requested report -time information for the reasons stated by the ALJ. In particular , the Board noted that, while the “Union set forth three examples of possible sources of those report times,” it made “clear that the sources specified were nonexhaustive by using ‘included, but not limited to’ language.” So in the Board’s view, the Union was not required to modify its request when UPS responded that it did not have report times in any of the three explicitly listed sources, and UPS “was not entitled to limit its search for information in this manner.” The Board further found that UPS’s “perfunctory

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response to the Union’s request for the information was not sufficient to satisfy its duty under the Act to make a reasonable, good faith effort to respond to the Union’s information request.”

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United Parcel Service, Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, (11th Cir. 2024).

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